At nine each morning, Mohamed Ghaith begins his shift at an Egyptian news website. His working week is supposed to comprise five eight-hour days, for a monthly salary of EGP 7,000. On paper, he should leave at five in the afternoon. In practice, the working day is less predictable.
The pressure of breaking news, successive assignments and the need to finish stories before publication often keeps him at his desk beyond the scheduled end of his shift. Sometimes, he finds himself choosing between leaving while work remains unfinished and staying until it is done.
Remaining in the newsroom means buying food and, perhaps, another coffee or tea to maintain his concentration. These purchases place an additional strain on an already modest salary. Ghaith tells Zawia3 that the expense starts with the journey to work and continues with the trip home. Drinking water and mobile calls and internet data, which he needs to contact news sources, add further costs during the day.
A salary can therefore begin to disappear before its recipient reaches the workplace. There is a fare in each direction, breakfast during the first hours of the shift, a hot drink or a bottle of water, and possibly another meal if work continues into the evening. Each purchase looks small in isolation. Repeated day after day, however, the purchases become a regular monthly bill. Part of the employee’s salary must finance being at work before it can meet their own needs or those of their family.
Small daily purchases become a fixed monthly bill, paid out of the salary that the employee is working to earn.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has highlighted long working hours in Egypt relative to international patterns. Spending longer at work can also affect employees’ expenditure. It leaves fewer opportunities to eat home-prepared food and may lead to additional purchases of meals and drinks. Time pressure and exhaustion may encourage some workers to choose quicker or more expensive transport to shorten an arduous journey.
A salary that pays for getting to work
The costs of reaching the workplace and remaining there are particularly visible in large cities. Residential neighbourhoods may be far from employment centres in New Cairo’s Fifth Settlement, Sheikh Zayed, Smart Village and Sixth of October City. Economist Hany Tawfik says geography consequently helps determine how much income remains available to spend. Daily travel takes a much larger share of a low-paid employee’s earnings than it does of a high earner’s salary.
Spending on food and drinks during working hours further reduces the money left for the household, Tawfik adds. Repeated throughout the month, these purchases leave less available for rent, bills and other family needs. The issue is not simply the advertised wage or the amount deposited in an employee’s account, but what remains after paying the recurring expenses necessary to keep attending work.
The law regulates working hours, but who pays for attendance?
Article 117 of Egypt’s Labour Law No. 14 of 2025 sets ordinary actual working time at a maximum of eight hours a day or 48 hours a week, excluding meal and rest breaks. Article 118 requires breaks totalling at least one hour and generally prevents more than five consecutive hours of work, subject to specified exceptions. Article 119 normally limits the span between the beginning and end of the working day to ten hours, while allowing twelve hours for certain types of work. Article 121 regulates exceptional overtime and also imposes a twelve-hour limit on presence at the establishment. Article 122 concerns displaying the work and rest schedule; it is not the provision establishing that limit.
An employee’s presence at work may therefore extend beyond their actual working hours, including periods when they still need to buy food or other necessities. The law does not establish a single universal food and transport allowance for every job. It does, however, impose specific obligations under Article 271: employers must provide transport at their own expense where ordinary transport does not reach the workplace, and food and accommodation in remote areas under the relevant rules. Article 112 also prohibits forcing workers to buy food, goods or services from specified shops or from the employer. Individual contracts and collective agreements may provide additional benefits.
The workday meal becomes a monthly bill
In many jobs, commuting and eating during the working day remain expenses borne by the employee. Time pressure also affects opportunities to prepare meals at home. A study published in 2022, using data from 14,807 respondents in Australia, found an association between time spent working and commuting and the frequency of buying food outside the home. In its model examining changes within individuals, an additional hour was associated with approximately 0.6% more frequent purchasing, equivalent to roughly 6% for ten additional hours. This measure covered employment-related time, including commuting. It does not establish that longer hours alone cause the same change for every worker, or that the estimate applies directly to Egypt.
Official inflation statistics do not measure the price of an employee’s lunch specifically. They do, however, describe the surrounding price pressures. Annual inflation for the whole of Egypt stood at 12.7% in August 2026. The restaurants and hotels category rose by 13.4% year on year, compared with 6.5% for food and beverages. This nationwide measure differs from urban inflation. These broad categories cannot determine the increase in any particular meal, but they help explain why buying prepared food and cooking at home may expose households to different price pressures.
Among the prices documented for this report in 2026, a basic ful, or fava bean, sandwich starts at around EGP 10 and can reach EGP 20 with additions. An individual portion of koshary ranges from approximately EGP 35 to EGP 80, depending on the outlet and portion size. These are examples from the reporting, not a statistical average for every part of Egypt. Spending an additional EGP 10 on each of 22 working days adds EGP 220 to the monthly bill, or 3.1% of a salary of EGP 7,000.
Zawia3 calculated illustrative food and drink scenarios using 22 working days and a reference monthly salary of EGP 7,000. Spending EGP 50 a day on breakfast and a drink produces a monthly total of EGP 1,100, equivalent to 15.7% of that salary. If the day approaches twelve hours and requires another meal, such as koshary, spending could reach EGP 100 a day. That would total EGP 2,200 a month, or 31.4% of the reference salary. These calculations depend on the stated prices and choices; they do not suggest that all employees spend the same amount.
In the jobs considered in this report, time spent at the workplace can range from eight to twelve hours, depending on shift arrangements. This does not mean that every hour of presence automatically constitutes lawful ordinary working time. For overtime covered by Article 121, the payment must be at least the ordinary hourly wage plus 35% for daytime hours or 70% for night work. The ordinary limits on actual work, together with meal and rest breaks, remain essential to distinguishing time spent on the premises from overtime for which additional pay is due.
Who pays for meals and travel?
Other countries use different arrangements to share these costs. In France, employers are not generally required to provide restaurant vouchers and may support meals in other ways. When they operate a voucher scheme, employers contribute between 50% and 60% of the voucher’s face value, with employees paying the remainder. The employer sets that face value. The EUR 25 limit concerns the amount that can be spent using vouchers in one day; it is not the maximum face value of each voucher.
French rules also require an appropriate place to eat. Establishments with fewer than fifty employees must provide an area that permits meals in safe and hygienic conditions. Those with fifty or more must provide a space equipped for food storage, refrigeration and reheating, alongside drinking water, tables and seating. Providing such a space does not necessarily mean the food itself is free.
India’s Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2020, brought into effect as part of the labour-code package in November 2025, provides for canteen facilities at establishments employing at least one hundred workers, including contract labour, under the relevant rules. It brings the availability of food facilities within employers’ responsibilities without necessarily making each meal free.
Brazil’s Workers’ Food Programme, known as PAT, encourages employers to provide meals or food benefits through tax incentives, prioritising lower-paid workers. Its transport-benefit legislation also regulates eligible public transport between home and work. The employee contributes up to 6% of basic pay, and the employer covers the eligible cost above that contribution. This operates under specified conditions; it is not an unlimited reimbursement for any means of transport an employee chooses.
In France, employers must cover at least half the cost of eligible public transport subscriptions used between home and work. This can include more than one necessary form of transport. The obligation concerns subscriptions under the applicable rules, rather than an automatic refund of half the price of every individually purchased ticket.
From advertised salary to available income
Economist Hassan El-Sady describes three stages between the announced salary and the money a worker can actually spend. The first is gross pay before deductions. The second is take-home pay after applicable taxes and social insurance contributions. The third follows the employee’s spending on transport, food and drinks associated with attending work.
Comparing advertised salaries alone therefore provides an incomplete picture of workers’ financial position, El-Sady tells Zawia3. In his view, the costs of reaching work and eating during the day help explain why the minimum wage is insufficient to meet employees’ and families’ needs. Part of that wage has already been committed to transport and daily meals before other household requirements are considered.
Two jobs offering the same salary can leave their employees with very different amounts to spend.
El-Sady argues that an increase in nominal wages does not necessarily produce an equal improvement in living standards. He links wage increases to economic measures that can absorb the gain, including fuel-price rises and reductions in in-kind support. In his account, higher transport and food costs can redirect the additional income towards minibuses and restaurants. This is his assessment of the relationship between policy and workers’ budgets, rather than proof that every wage increase has precisely the same outcome.
The distinction between announcing a rise and applying it matters. An increase in the minimum wage for state employees to EGP 8,000 was announced in April 2026, approximately 14.3% above EGP 7,000. Under Prime Ministerial Decree No. 2170 of 2026, it took effect on 1 July, rather than 1 April. Fuel and vehicle-gas prices had risen on 10 March, before the announcement, by approximately 14% to 30% depending on the product. The public-sector decision did not automatically establish the same wage floor in private employment. The private-sector decision had raised that minimum to EGP 7,000 from March 2025.
El-Sady refers to the “reservation wage”, the lowest wage at which a person is willing to accept a job. This economic concept differs from the statutory minimum an employer is legally obliged to pay. “When the costs of getting to work and living rise, the value of the job offer declines because compensation for the time, effort and costs involved is overlooked,” he says.
He argues that assessing earnings should start with legal deductions, including taxes and social insurance, and then account for daily work expenses. The report considers an approximate example of EGP 880 in deductions from EGP 7,000. That figure should not be treated as a standard deduction from every salary of that amount: the result varies with insurable earnings, exemptions and the components of pay. The scenarios in this report therefore use a reference salary of EGP 7,000 as their denominator, rather than purporting to reproduce every employee’s payslip. Separating these stages helps explain disposable resources within a wage system El-Sady describes as fragile.
Commuting can absorb more than an eighth of a salary
Reaching the workplace is a recurring item in an employee’s budget. Fuel-price increases in March 2026 were followed by higher fares for some public and collective transport services. Among the fares documented in the report are EGP 13 for an ordinary bus and EGP 19 for an ordinary minibus. Metro fares are EGP 10 for up to nine stations, EGP 12 for up to sixteen, EGP 15 for up to twenty-three, and EGP 20 for longer journeys. The report also records an EGP 25 fare on an electric-bus service such as the Becho–Imbaba route.
Using 22 working days and two journeys a day, Zawia3 calculates that a fare of EGP 25 in each direction produces a monthly transport bill of EGP 1,100. That is 15.7% of the reference EGP 7,000 salary. This example applies to a service charging that fare; it is not the average expenditure of every public transport user. The calculation also assumes just one vehicle in each direction, excluding transfers between services or additional journeys from more distant neighbourhoods. At the lower end, EGP 10 per journey would total EGP 440 a month, or approximately 6.3% of the same salary.
A US Census Bureau working paper explains why work expenses are deducted from household resources when calculating the Supplemental Poverty Measure. Money spent getting to and performing a job is no longer available to cover other needs. In calculations for 2015, updating work-expense estimates with newer survey data increased the estimated poverty rate by 0.3 percentage points. That figure measures the effect of the updated estimate compared with the previous estimate, not the total effect of deducting every work expense. It illustrates how the method of measurement can change the picture of household resources.
The cost of commuting extends beyond fares to the economic value of time spent travelling. A study published in 2009, using Dutch data on job searches and relocation, estimated the average marginal cost of an additional hour of commuting at around EUR 17. The estimate reflects that study’s context and assumptions about time and monetary costs. It is not a current estimate for Egyptian commuters, but it illustrates an aspect of the burden that a fare calculation alone cannot capture.
Benefits can change the value of a job
Jobs with identical cash salaries can impose different costs on the people doing them. Mayar Hassan, who works for Concentrix in Egypt, tells Zawia3 that her workplace provides transport and free drinks, alongside iftar and suhoor meals during Ramadan. Her account describes the benefits available in her experience; it should not be read as a verification of arrangements for every employee across the company.
Human resources specialist Mohamed Salem says the economic value of a job includes benefits such as transport, meals and healthcare, alongside the cash wage. These services reduce expenses employees would otherwise pay from their own income, even where the saving does not appear as a direct salary increase.
Such benefits are particularly relevant in sectors employing large numbers of people or relying on shifts, including call centres, Salem tells Zawia3. Travelling to a fixed workplace creates a recurring expense in workers’ budgets, making the availability of employer-provided transport significant.
Daily employment costs can influence whether a person stays in a job, especially when food and transport expenses combine with long hours. Salem estimates, on the basis of his professional judgement, that more than 90% of jobs in Egypt need in-kind benefits to be included in the overall cost of employment. This is his assessment, not a statistic established by a representative labour-market survey. He suggests that shared buses or affordable meals could help reduce absenteeism and employee turnover.
For Ghaith, each additional hour at work can bring another expense. The meal and drink are purchases made because he is still at the newsroom. As the days accumulate, a ful sandwich or a portion of koshary becomes a regular entry in a monthly budget capped at EGP 7,000. The report’s “hidden tax” is a description of these recurring costs, not a tax imposed by law: money spent in order to remain at the job that is supposed to fund the rest of his life.
