Two Thousand Five Hundred and Two

That is the monthly income, in euros, at which you are officially considered poor in Luxembourg. STATEC, the national statistics office, published the figure yesterday. It comes with context that makes it harder to ignore.

The numbers

One in seven people in Luxembourg lives below that line. 15.4% of women, 14.2% of men. The gap for young people is worse: more than one in five, 22.2%, are at risk of poverty.[1]

The median wage is 4,170 euros per person per month. The median disposable household income, after taxes and social contributions, is 6,522 euros. The top 20% have 4.6 times more available income than the bottom 20%.

The distortion

Luxembourg has the highest GDP per capita in the European Union. This is the number that gets repeated, in rankings, in news articles, in the kind of listicles that put little flag emojis next to countries. It is also deeply misleading.

GDP per capita measures what is produced, not what is kept. Cross-border workers, who commute from France, Belgium, and Germany, contribute to GDP but do not count as residents. The denominator is small. The numerator is inflated by the financial sector. The result is a number that tells you almost nothing about how people actually live.

Two thousand five hundred and two euros per month tells you something. It tells you what it costs to exist here at the margin. Rent, food, transport, health insurance, the thousand small expenses that eat a paycheck before the month ends. If you are below that number, you are not struggling. You are poor. By definition.

Young and poor

The 22.2% figure for young people is the one that should make people uncomfortable. These are not people who made bad choices or failed to plan. These are people entering a housing market where a one-bedroom apartment in Luxembourg City costs 1,500 euros if you can find one, which you often cannot. They are entering a job market where entry-level salaries have not kept pace with rent, and where the wealth accumulated by older generations sits in property values that the young will never match.

Tomorrow is Labour Day. There will be speeches. Some of them will mention these numbers. Most will not.