Average Salary in Baghdad: Are the Wages Worth the Costs? (Spoiler: My Laptop Got Stolen Twice)

last time i tried to budget in baghdad, i ended up trading my spare charger for a loaf of bread and a stranger’s life story. the avg monthly salary? around 2.2 million IQD ($1,500) if you're lucky enough to be employed. that’s the official number. the real number? it’s whatever your uncle in the ministry can smuggle out through the back door.

i came here as an indie film scout chasing pre-war cinema archives. thought i’d find a film festival with a crowd that still remembers how to smile without checking behind them. instead, i found a city where rent eats half your paycheck, and "electricity is back" is a holiday.

the air’s thick today-not with smog, but with the dust of sun-baked rooftops and the faint smell of kabsa from the guy three alleys over who still sells it even when the curfew hits. no one talks about it, but the heat here doesn’t just bake the asphalt-it bakes your motivation. by 3pm, even the pigeons look like they’re napping on protest signs.

here’s the brutal math:

note: if you use "unofficial" translators to avoid police checkpoints, expect to pay 40% extra. rumor has it the guy who runs the wifi at Al-Rashid Mall eavesdrops on your zoom calls. no one’s proven it. but also, no one’s seen him sleep.

"I got paid last week. Two days later, they said the bank’s down again. So i borrowed 50kIQD off my nephew’s old boss and bought a generator. Now i’m charging my phone under the stairwell. Life’s a battery, babe."
- Overheard near the Al-Shaheed Monument, 2023"

"They pay you in dinars. But your rent? You pay in dollars. And if you ask why? They shrug. Like gravity’s a loan."
- Drunk advice from a former civil engineer smoking in a parking lot after sunset"

i got robbed twice. once by a kid who took my camera, once by the power company that kept billing me for electricity i didn’t get. turns out, your salary isn’t what you earn- it’s what you survive on after the whispers stop.

you can still find magic here. you just have to know where to look. the old bookstalls near Mutanabbi Street? they sell seven different editions of 1970s poetry with Saddam’s face faded in the margins. the shit still sells. the cafes still play Oum Kalthoum when the lights flicker.




if you’re thinking of coming: don’t come for the money. come for the resilience. come for the guy who still opens his bakery at dawn even though the oven’s got a hole in it. come for the street art that says "we were here" in black spray paint and gold leaf.

check out the local vibe:
- r/baghdad on Reddit - 40k users, mostly posting "still alive" updates
- TripAdvisor: Top 5 Restaurants in Baghdad
- Yelp: A Meshwani Café That Still Has Wi-Fi
- Iraqi Film Archive - Not Everything Is Lost

i rented a room above a pharmacy. the owner says the building’s been standing since 1989. "It’s got more scars than me," he grinned. i asked if the salary’s worth it. he handed me tea, then looked at the ceiling.
"The wages? No. But the quiet? You can’t buy that anywhere else."

so yeah. the answer’s no. barely.

but you stay.

because some places don't pay you in money.

they pay you in stories that outlive the silence.

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