Global real wage growth started to recover in 2010 after the recession, but has decelerated since, according to the Global Wage Report by the International Labour Organisation. Real wage growth fell to 1.7% in 2015 — it’s lowest rate in four years. The numbers change when excluding China, where wage growth has been faster than elsewhere. Excluding China, real wage growth fell to 0.9% in 2015 from 1.6% in 2012.

Wage growth in emerging and developing countries picked up after the recession, but has since slowed down. However, wages are continuing to grow in developed countries.

The report also found that in a majority of countries across the world, wage growth in recent decades has lagged growth in labour productivity, leading to a fall in labour’s share of GDP. This was caused by globalization, need for high skills in some areas and weakening of labour market institutions as well as pressure from financial markets send surpluses to investors.

The report also noted that average wages do not tell the story of how wages are distributed — and there is growing income inequality.

“Worker characteristics don’t explain wage gap”, according to the summary of the report. “Descriptive statistics for a sample of both developed and developing countries document that a university degree does not necessarily guarantee a highly paid job; that the real estate and financial sectors are over-represented among top-paid workers; and that the proportion of women continuously declines as one moves towards the higher-paid deciles”.

The report called for policy coordination among other things at the global level to help deal with the problem.

A summary of the report and the full report are available online.