Bakit Hindi Pantay? A Filipino Worker's Honest Look at the Wage Gap
One day of hard labor. One cake in return.
That's not a metaphor — that was literally my "dedication pay" on top of a 300-450 peso daily wage at one of my early jobs. A full day of work, and what I got to take home extra was worth about as much as a cake from the bakery. I remember doing the math in my head and thinking: did I really just trade eight-plus hours of my life for this?
That question sat with me for years. And it's the question this post is going to answer — not with theory, but with the actual path I walked through three different wage brackets: below minimum, minimum, and above minimum wage.
Where It Started: Selling Whatever I Could
Back in 2019, I didn't have a clear plan. I just knew I needed income, so I took whatever door opened first.
I became an online seller — buying items cheap and reselling them for a small markup on Facebook Marketplace. I also worked as a tindero at a small boutique shop owned by a churchmate. It wasn't glamorous, but it was proof that I was willing to hustle for whatever margin I could find.
Then came one of my most "standard" corporate jobs — if you can call it that. I became a banana chip cooker, doing first-fry production. This was actually a milestone in a strange way: it was the first time I had SSS, Pag-IBIG, and PhilHealth deducted from my pay. But the wage itself told a different story. I was earning somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pesos a week, often working more than eight hours a day. Hard labor, below minimum wage.
The Freelance Bookkeeping Rollercoaster
After that, I found my way into freelance bookkeeping — working for US-based companies and getting paid hourly in US dollars for the first time in my life. My very first rate was $4 an hour. On paper, that sounded huge — over 200 pesos an hour. But it wasn't full-time, and it definitely wasn't stable.
Some months I'd level up to around $200 a month. Then I'd lose the client and be back to zero. It felt like riding out one storm after another. Eventually, the instability wore me down, and I needed something that felt more secure — so I went back to full-time employment. This time, at least, I was earning minimum wage.
"Above Minimum" Sounded Like the Answer — Until It Wasn't
My next role was as a back-office admin and sales assistant, earning 500 pesos a day. Technically above minimum wage for that period, but not by much — close enough that I still counted it as minimum in my head.
While employed there, I kept trying to build something on the side — small business attempts, part-time gigs — but nothing was enough. I was constantly short. And here's the part that still sticks with me:
I was renting space in a common house. I had no family of my own to support. I wasn't even the breadwinner.
So why was it still this hard?
That question got louder when I finally landed a role as an Accounts Payable staff member for a US-based transportation company, with a back-office setup in Davao City. This was the first time I was truly above minimum wage — complete benefits, HMO included. On paper, it looked like the dream job.
But then reality set in. I had to pay rent. Buy my own food. Take care of myself. Pay off previous debts. Even with a "good" salary, by the time everything was accounted for, there was barely anything left. I was thankful — genuinely thankful — because that income helped me finally clear old debts. But I still had to borrow again just to cover daily allowance and expenses.
And yet, watching my colleagues in that same job save money, travel occasionally, and enjoy staycation-style team buildings, I started asking a bigger question:
Why do only a few people get to experience "above minimum," while most people stay stuck in minimum wage — or don't even know there's a difference?
Is it skillset? Education? Lack of opportunity? Or something bigger — a system that isn't built to let ordinary workers get ahead?
The Real Problem Isn't a Lack of Jobs
Here's where the wage journey turns into an economic argument, and it's the core belief this book is built on: having a job does not automatically mean having money.
We're often told the solution to poverty is more jobs — that if the government just creates enough opportunities, life gets easier for everyone. But that logic misses something fundamental about how an economy actually works.
An economy runs on two sides: consumers and producers. Producers supply what consumers demand. But here's the question nobody asks enough: what can a consumer actually buy if they have no real purchasing power?
Even if every single person had a job, the economy would still stall out if wages left everyone with weak purchasing power. Look at how alive business districts like BGC are — vendors thriving, foot traffic constant, sales moving. Why? Because everyone there has money to spend. That's it. That's the whole secret.
More opportunities don't come from creating more businesses in places where nobody can afford to buy anything. Opportunities multiply when people have the capacity to spend. It works in that direction — not the other way around. You can flood an area with businesses, but if nobody around has money to buy anything, it's a dead end no matter how many storefronts you open.
Why I'm Not Middle-Class — And Why That Matters
I want to be honest about something: at the time of writing this, I'm not part of the middle class by asset or income standards. I'm writing this as an ordinary worker, affected by the same broken system as everyone reading this — and I believe we fix it together, not from a place of having already "made it."
This isn't a lecture from someone who's arrived. It's a conversation between people still figuring out how to get ahead in a system that wasn't built with ordinary workers' purchasing power in mind.
Where This Leaves Us
My own path — online selling, banana chip production, freelance bookkeeping, back-office work, accounts payable — wasn't a straight line to financial comfort. Each job taught me something, but none of them, on its own, solved the actual problem: an economy that keeps workers just above (or below) the line of getting by, without ever building real purchasing power.
If you've ever asked yourself the same question I did — bakit ganito kahirap kahit may trabaho naman ako? — you're not imagining it, and you're not alone in it.
This is exactly the conversation I unpack further in my other writings and in the community I've built around real talk on bookkeeping, business ownership, and building a life with actual financial breathing room.
To know more about my services, writings — connect with me here — here's my website: https://www.kylenelsonomac.com/
Mahal na mahal kita. Mahal na mahal ka ng Diyos. Faith without action is nothing.