Not to side track, but did I just read that Cuban state workers get paid $20 a month?
Man, the currency thing is complicated. Okay, so my father in law is a very well-respected anesthesiologist and has had a spectacular career. He gets paid 8,000 Cuban Pesos (CUP) a month.
Now, the official exchange rate was 24 CUP to $1 USD. But then the pandemic hit and there was almost zero hard currency coming into the government coffers due to tourism cratering overnight. So then an unofficial "blackmarket" currency market developed. When the unofficial exchange rate got up to 150 CUP to $1 USD (not a typo), the government adjust their official rate to 120 CUP to $1.
As of today, the unoffical rate is 225 CUP to $1 USD. So, yeah, this guy makes about $35/month.
But he gets a lot of food given to him by the health ministry, as do most doctors, etc, but it's a grind. He doesn't have a mortgage nor are there property taxes but the cost of living (food, etc) is essentially pegged to the rise in the USD in the unofficial market yet charged in CUP.
So a bunch of plantains that cost say 30 CUP before the pandemic are now like 600 CUP.
My wife and I are lucky as she gets paid in USD as she works for the Havana office of a foreign firm. I, of course, have access to hard currency. So we're not affected nearly as much as someone living on a government salary.
Lots of people get remittances from family abroad which saves them but many don't. I don't know how they do it, but many people make it work. Side hussles, etc. but there is many who are living below the poverty line.
The economy here is like no other place in the world. The government is liberalizing many things and legalized private corporations for Cubans. These corporations are importing a massive amount of containers of food (boxes of frozen chicken, canned goods, etc) but as they need to make payment abroad in hard currency (usually Euros or USD), this causes the continued loss of buying power of the Cuban Peso. Many collect in hard currency where they can but often need to buy large amounts of hard currency on the unofficial market which drives up the value of said hard currency against the CUP.
It's a beautiful country with amazing, resilient people but this is much like the Special Period, as it was called, after the fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1990. While there aren't the shortages, thanks to the private corporations importing goods, the goods are nearly, or very, unaffordable to a significant portion of the people.
There's lots of predictions where this will end but no one has a crystal ball.