Notwithstanding the fact that Bangladesh is economically developing by leaps and bounds so much so that the country is expected to soon graduate into a developing nation from the current Least Developed Country, the growth of real wage in the country has declined in 2017 after recording growth in real wage for two consecutive years.
The Global Wage Report 2018-19 published by International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently underlined that the country’s wage growth in real terms (adjusted for price inflation) declined to 3 per cent in 2017 from 3.6 per cent in 2016. In 2015, the real wage growth in Bangladesh was 3.5 per cent while it was 2.4 per cent in 2014.
The report further underlined that Bangladesh achieved 3.4 per cent real wage growth in last 10 years (2008-17), which was lower than the regional (Southern Asia) median growth of 3.7 per cent in the period.
“Global wage growth in 2017 was not only lower in 2016, but fell to its lowest growth rate since 2008, remaining far below the levels obtaining before the global financial crisis,” the report — which has been prepared based on data collected from 136 countries – stated.
The study further reportedly found that there are wide variations among countries, with the mean hourly gender pay gap, for example, ranging from 34 per cent in Pakistan to 10.3 per cent negative in the Philippines (which would be interpreted to mean that in this country, women earn on average 10.3 per cent more than men).
As per the report, in Bangladesh the factor-weighted mean hourly wage gender pay gap was encouraging (-4.7 per cent). “Although there are some variations among countries, it seems that in many countries the gender pay gap widens gradually from the younger to the older cohorts. What is also striking is that in all but four of the countries (Australia, Bangladesh, China, Russian Federation), the gender pay gap is positive at the point of entry into the labour market,” the report read.