ILO launches Global Wage Report for 2020/2021
According to the new Global Wage Report for 2020/2021 launched by the International Labour Office on December 2020, not all workers have been equally affected by the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact on women, for example, has been worse than on men. Estimates based on a sample of 28 European countries find that, without wage subsidies, women would have lost 8.1 per cent of their wages in the second quarter of 2020, compared to 5.4 per cent for men. The crisis has also affected lower-paid workers severely. Those in lower-skilled occupations lost more working hours than higher-paying managerial and professional jobs. Without subsidies, the average amount of wages lost across all groups would have been 6.5 per cent. However, wage subsidies compensated for 40 per cent of this amount.
The report also includes an analysis of minimum wage systems, which could play an important role in building a recovery that is sustainable and equitable, and looks at wage trends in 136 countries in the four years preceding the pandemic.