(05 July 2018) – Economic growth is picking up and unemployment has reached record lows in some OECD countries but wages continue to stagnate. Unless countries can break this cycle, public belief in the recovery will be undermined and labour market inequality will widen, according to a new OECD report.
The OECD Employment Outlook 2018 says that unemployment rates are below, or close to, pre-crisis levels in most countries. Yet the picture continues to be mixed in terms of jobs quality and security, while poverty has grown among the working age population, reaching 10.6% in 2015 compared to 9.6% a decade earlier.
Wage growth remains remarkably more sluggish than before the financial crisis.
More worryingly, wage stagnation affects low-paid workers much more than those at the top: real labour incomes of the top 1% of earners have increased much faster than those of median full-time workers in recent years, reinforcing a long-standing trend.