Decoupling of wages from productivity

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The decoupling of wages from productivity, sometimes known as the great decoupling,[ citation needed ] is the gap between the growth rate of median wages and the growth rate of GDP. Economists began to acknowledge this problem toward the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. This problem furthermore leads to wage stagnation despite continued economic growth. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

A number of causes have been hypothesized, including advances in technology such as automation, globalization, self-employment and wage inequality. [4] [5] [6] Some commentators argue that some or all of the Great Decoupling can be explained as the product of faulty assumptions about the underlying economics. [7] [8]

Background

Average wages (solid line) vs GDP per hour worked (dotted line) in the G7 from 1990 to 2020 Average wages and GDP per hour worked in G7.svg
Average wages (solid line) vs GDP per hour worked (dotted line) in the G7 from 1990 to 2020

On average across 24 OECD countries, there has been significant decoupling of real median wage growth from productivity growth over the past two decades. There have been large cross-country differences, both in overall decoupling and the extent to which it has gone together with real median wage stagnation. In a number of countries with above-average productivity growth, such as Korea, Poland or the Slovak Republic, real median wages have grown well above the OECD average despite significant wage-productivity decoupling. However, where productivity growth has been around or below the OECD average, such as in Canada, Japan and the United States, decoupling has been associated with near-stagnation of real median wages. [8] In about a third of the covered OECD countries, real median wages have grown at similar or even higher rates than labour productivity. In some countries, such as the Czech Republic or Sweden, this has been associated with above-average real median wage growth, but in some others with below-average productivity growth, including Italy and Spain, real median wages have nonetheless grown at very low rates. [3]

There have also been large differences in the relative contributions of labour shares and wage inequality to overall decoupling, suggesting that country-specific factors matter, including labour and product market policies and the level and distribution of skills in the population. For instance, in the United States around half of the decoupling (0.6 percentage points of 1.3 percentage points) is explained by the decline in the labour share while it explains virtually all decoupling in Japan. [3]

The aggregate decoupling of median wages from productivity partly reflects declines in labour shares at the technological frontier (defined as the top 5% of firms in terms of labour productivity within each country group in each industry and year). In countries where aggregate labour shares have declined, the decoupling of real wages from productivity has been particularly pronounced in firms at the technological frontier. [8] This could indicate the presence of "winner-takes-most" dynamics, as frontier firms take advantage of technology or globalisation-related increases in economies of scale and scope to reduce the share of fixed labour costs in value-added (e.g. related to research and development, product design or marketing) and/or again a dominant position that allows them to raise their mark-ups. [9] By contrast, there has been no such decoupling of real wages from productivity in frontier firms in countries where labour shares have increased.

Causes

Technological change

Expansion of global value chains

Recent OECD analysis further suggests that global value chain expansion has compressed labour shares. [10] Indeed, an increase in global value chain participation of 10 percentage points of value added reduces the labour share by 1 percentage point. Given that the average increase in global value chain participation observed in the OECD over 1995–2013 was around 6 percentage points of value added, this suggests that on average across countries the expansion of global value chains reduced the labour share by 0.6 percentage points. With the caveat that global value chain expansion is unlikely to be independent of technological change, [15] quantitatively its effect appears to be only around a third of that from declines in relative investment prices. Trade integration also appears to play a role in increased wage inequality. At the aggregate level, the ratio of median to average wages is negatively associated with value added imports, especially from China. [13] This could reflect the fact that increased trade integration with China has reduced labour demand more among low-skilled workers than among high-skilled workers. [16]

Evidence from micro-aggregated data further suggests that betweenfirm wage dispersion increased in sectors that became more open to trade. [14] Overall, the empirical evidence based on a variety of data sources and methodologies consistently suggests that technological change and increased trade integration have contributed to the decoupling of median wages from productivity, both by lowering labour shares and raising wage inequality. This does not imply that technological change and increased trade integration harm workers, since a large body of evidence suggests that these developments raise aggregate productivity, including through efficiency-enhancing reallocation, reduce prices and expand the range of available products. [17] However, it raises the question of how public policies can contribute to the broader sharing of the productivity gains from technological change and increased trade integration.

Role of public policies and institutions

Public policies play a key role in ensuring that productivity gains from technological change and global value chain expansion are broadly shared with workers. Based on several recent OECD studies, a number of key findings emerge. In particular, enhancing and preserving workers’ skills is crucial not only for raising productivity growth but also for promoting a broader sharing of productivity gains, both by supporting wages at the bottom of the wage distribution and raising labour shares. By contrast, a number of other policies that tend to raise productivity growth can have conflicting effects on labour shares and wage inequality, with the relative size of these effects likely to depend on initial policy settings. [8]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik; McAfee, Andrew (2013). "The Great Decoupling". mitsloan.mit.edu. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  2. ↑ Škare, Marinko; Škare, Damian (4 May 2017). "Is the great decoupling real?". Journal of Business Economics and Management. 18 (3): 451–467. doi: 10.3846/16111699.2017.1323793 . ISSN   1611-1699.
  3. 1 2 3 Schwellnus, Cyrille; Kappeler, Andreas; Pionnier, Pierre-Alain (31 January 2017). "Decoupling of wages from productivity: Macro-level facts". OECD Economics Department Working Papers. doi:10.1787/d4764493-en.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ↑ "OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2018 Issue 2, Chapter 2: Decoupling of wages from productivity: what implications for public policies?" (PDF). OECD. 2018. p. 51. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  5. ↑ "Wage growth and productivity growth: the myth and reality of 'decoupling'". British Politics and Policy at LSE. 13 January 2014. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  6. ↑ Schwellnus, Cyrille (2019). "Decoupling of wages from productivity" (PDF). OECD. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Pessoa, João Paulo; Van Reenen, John (October 2013). "CEP Discussion Paper No 1246: Decoupling of Wage Growth and Productivity Growth? Myth and Reality" (PDF). cep.lse.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Decoupling of wages from productivity: What implications for public policies? – OECD". www.oecd.org. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
  9. ↑ Calligaris, Sara; Criscuolo, Chiara; Marcolin, Luca (25 April 2018). "Mark-ups in the digital era". OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers. doi: 10.1787/4efe2d25-en . S2CID   158520096.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. 1 2 Schwellnus, Cyrille; Pak, Mathilde; Pionnier, Pierre-Alain; Crivellaro, Elena (4 September 2018). "Labour share developments over the past two decades: The role of technological progress, globalisation and "winner-takes-most" dynamics". OECD Economics Department Working Papers. doi:10.1787/3eb9f9ed-en. S2CID   54962424.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ↑ Autor, David; Salomons, Anna (30 July 2018). "Is Automation Labor-Displacing? Productivity Growth, Employment, and the Labor Share". doi: 10.3386/w24871 . S2CID   219376868.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. ↑ Acemoglu, Daron; Restrepo, Pascual (June 2018). "The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment". American Economic Review. 108 (6): 1488–1542. doi: 10.1257/aer.20160696 . ISSN   0002-8282.
  13. 1 2 OECD (7 December 2018). OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2018 Issue 2. OECD Publishing. ISBN   978-92-64-30873-2.
  14. 1 2 Berlingieri, Giuseppe; Blanchenay, Patrick; Criscuolo, Chiara (12 May 2017). "The great divergence(s)". OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers. doi:10.1787/953f3853-en.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. ↑ Baker, Scott R.; Bloom, Nicholas; Davis, Steven J. (11 July 2016). "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty*". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 131 (4): 1593–1636. doi: 10.1093/qje/qjw024 . ISSN   1531-4650.
  16. ↑ Autor, David H.; Dorn, David; Hanson, Gordon H. (31 October 2016). "The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade". Annual Review of Economics. 8 (1): 205–240. doi:10.1146/annurev-economics-080315-015041. ISSN   1941-1383. S2CID   1415485.
  17. ↑ Melitz, Marc J.; Redding, Stephen J. (May 2014). "Missing Gains from Trade?". American Economic Review. 104 (5): 317–321. doi:10.1257/aer.104.5.317. ISSN   0002-8282. S2CID   15370295.
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