Worry when wages race ahead of productivity? 

I refer to the article “When wages race ahead of productivity: Should we worry?” (Sunday Times, Apr 24).

0.9% p.a. real wage growth in a decade?

The real average wage growth was only 0.9 per cent per annum from 2004 to 2014 (Source: Ministry of Trade and Industry Economic Survey of Singapore 2015).

To put this in perspective – a worker who earned $1,000 would only have had a real increase of $94 to $1,094 after 10 years!

Similarly, a worker who earned $2,000 would only have had a real increase of $188 to $2,188 after 10 years!

S’poreans’ real wage growth even lower?

As I understand that the statistics are for residents – was the real average wage growth for Singaporeans even lower than 0.9 per cent?

“Average” means more than half had less than 0.9%?

Since it is “average wage growth” – does it mean that more than half of Singaporean workers may have had real average wage growth of even less than 0.9 per cent?

Many countries had low wage growth despite higher productivity growth?

Although productivity at 0.8 per cent per annum lagged behind real wage growth of 0.9 per cent – the consistent rhetoric over the years that wages should not go up without corresponding productivity growth may not hold water, as many developed and developing countries had low real wage growth despite higher productivity growth.

For example, the real average wage growth as a ratio of productivity growth for Australia, United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Britain, was 1.0, 0.7, 0.4, 0.1, 0.0 and -0.5 respectively.

Singapore’s ratio was 1.2.

Leong Sze Hian