Israel is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global wage report.
By World Israel News Staff
The Global Wage Report 2018/19 finds that the world’s average wage growth slowed in 2017 compared with last year and is considered the lowest rate since 2008. But there is a bright spot. Israel saw an increase in salary wages, in contrast to the global trend.
“In comparison to the rest of the world, in Israel, the average real wage increase is actually rising – 3% in 2017, 2.9% in 2016, 2.6% in 2015, 2.7% in 2014 and 1.4% in 2013,” the report said.
The Global Wage Report, put out by the U.N.’s International Labor Organization, found that on average “in real terms (adjusted for price inflation) global wage growth declined to 1.8 percent in 2017 from 2.4 percent in 2016.” Even China fell from a 1.8 percent growth rate in 2016 to 1.1 percent growth in 2017.
The ILO based its findings on data from 136 countries.
The report’s analysis found that real wage growth in advanced G20 countries declined from 0.9 per cent in 2016 to 0.4 per cent in 2017, while in emerging and developing G20 countries, “real wage growth fluctuated between 4.9 percent in 2016 and 4.3 percent in 2017.”
“It’s puzzling that in high-income economies we see slow wage growth alongside a recovery in GDP growth and falling unemployment. And early indications suggest that slow wage growth continues in 2018,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
“Such stagnating wages are an obstacle to economic growth and rising living standards. Countries should explore, with their social partners, ways to achieve socially and economically sustainable wage growth,” he said.
Emerging and developing G20 countries have done better for the last 20 years, according to the report, with average real wages nearly tripling in those countries. Advanced G20 countries have only seen wages rise 9 percent, the report says.