Why Are Wages So Low?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2016
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pay packets in developed economies have hardly grown in decades.
Economic output and the number of people in jobs have both improved since the global downturn. But with income levels failing to rise, ordinary workers aren't feeling the benefit. And for many, the good times were over long before the 2008 financial crash.
In this edition of The Inquiry we hear from experts in the three largest economies to have suffered flat wage growth in recent years: Japan, Germany and the US. What lies behind the experience in each country – and can those answers help to explain the wider phenomenon?
Presenter: Linda Yueh
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC World Service, this is Linda Yu with the inquiry. |
| 0:10.0 | This week we're asking, why are wages so low? |
| 0:15.0 | It's Thursday afternoon on the 3rd of March. |
| 0:23.0 | As he does every month, Jason Furman is walking through the pristine corridors of America's |
| 0:28.4 | most famous address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. |
| 0:33.0 | In his hands, he has a secret document |
| 0:36.0 | which he's about to deliver to the leader of the world's most powerful economy. |
| 0:41.0 | I walk into the Oval Office to tell the president the latest employment data. |
| 0:46.0 | It's his job as the chairman of President Obama's's council of economic advisors to bring the |
| 0:55.0 | data to the Oval Office ahead of its official release and every time there's one |
| 1:01.2 | thing on the president's mind. |
| 1:03.0 | The question that I get from him the most often is, you know, what's going on with wage growth? |
| 1:09.0 | Last Thursday, the answer was similar to previous months. |
| 1:13.8 | Job creation is going okay, but wage growth remains a problem. |
| 1:18.8 | It's one of the biggest economic challenges at the moment. |
| 1:22.4 | Wages affect everything from where interest rates are |
| 1:26.0 | headed to how we plan our future. With the recession behind us, employment is improving, yet wages remain stubbornly low. |
| 1:36.4 | In America, median wages have been stagnant for more than 40 years. In Japan and Germany, it's been 20 years without a pay rise. |
| 1:47.0 | And it's a global problem. Wage growth has been weak around the world for nearly a decade. |
| 1:55.0 | So, what's going on? |
| 1:58.0 | Why are wages so low? Low. |
| 2:05.0 | Part 1. How low? |
... |
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