Chart of the week: are wages the key to competitiveness?
Wages are the key to competitiveness – aren’t they? Well, yes and no. They are an important factor in costs, and can dictate where stuff is made. But they aren’t the whole story. Two recent stories...
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Thailand to increase wages despite flood costs
The Thai government is pressing ahead with a large minimum wage increase despite appeals from companies concerned about the financial impact of the worst floods in 50 years. Wages in Bangkok and six...
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Guest post: Bangladesh in 2012 – opportunities, with less global gloom
By Ifty Islam of Asian Tiger Capital Partners The macro uncertainties for 2012 remain daunting. The prospects for the next phase of the eurozone crisis still looms large, while an ongoing Chinese real...
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Foxconn: workers in new suicide threat
It’s a new year, but for Foxconn, the old problems seem to be coming back all over again. It turns out that early last week, at least 150 workers at the Taiwanese group’s factory in the Central Chinese...
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White-collar workers profit from China’s skills shortage
As business confidence in many western countries is once again being hammered, staying in work is the first thing on many managers’ and professionals’ minds. But not so in Asia. As the regional economy...
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Hon Hai pay rise could hurt investors
Hon Hai has announced it is raising the base salary of its 1m-plus workers by between 16 to 25 per cent, the first major pay hike since it doubled pay for operators and line managers in 2010 following...
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Belarus’s salary dilemma
Alexander Lukashenko wants average salaries in Belarus to go up – and what the authoritarian leader wants, he usually gets, which is likely to mean more trouble for the ex-Soviet republic’s battered...
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Malaysia: sharing the prosperity
Photo: Bloomberg Happy labour day, labourers in Malaysia. On Tuesday the country got its first ever minimum wage, part of prime minister Najib Razak’s ambitious plans to make the country work smarter,...
View ArticleVideo: Lifting Malaysia out of the middle income trap
Idris Jala, the Malaysian minister in charge of economic development, tells the FT’s Sarah Mishkin how his department is seeking to lift Malaysia out of the so called middle income trap through...
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Guest post: Youth unemployment in the Arab world: tackling the demographic...
By Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum. The threat to stability in the Arab world posed by youth unemployment is such that governments old and new must urgently address the worsening economic...
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EM wages: paying more at the top
While average wages in emerging markets have increased in many countries, especially China, they are still well behind those in developed nations. But not at the top. Over the last decade, senior...
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Thai minimum wage: short term pain
The Thai government, known for its string of populist policies including rice and fuel subsidies, is delighting working class voters (those with a job, anyway) with the introduction of a national...
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Indonesia: Nike in low wages row
A 2012 protest over wages The battle over factory pay in Indonesia is intensifying, with vocal local trade unions joining hands with a US non-governmental organisation to pressure Nike suppliers into...
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EM wages: belt-tightening
Workers in emerging markets hoping for a pay rise this year might be in for disappointment. A new survey from Grant Thornton shows only 11 per cent of businesses operating in the BRICs are expecting to...
View ArticleChina: Is current optimism justified?
We are all China bulls now. So the stock markets appeared to be saying for the past few months. The Chinese government released a slew of positive data in January — ranging from strong exports in...
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India: wages growth forecast to slow to 10 per cent but is still Asia’s fastest
It is the second day of a bandh, a general strike in India triggered by rising prices and economic reforms that are seen as “anti-labour”. And in the middle of all this, new data has been released...
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Guest post: India’s workers have never had it so good
By Saurabh Mukherjea and Ritika Mankar-Mukherjee of Ambit Capital Indian newspapers paint a gloomy picture of the state of the nation. They point to the 5 percentage-point drop over the last five years...
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S Africa mining: any hope?
With crucial wage negotiations under way amid persistent strikes and declining commodity prices, South African mining has become symbolic of everything going wrong in the country. So would the latest...
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S Korea: top of the pay league by 2030?
Will South Koreans earn higher wages than the French, Germans, Americans and Brits in twenty years or so? Perhaps, according to a study published on Thursday by professional services firm PwC.Continue...
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Guest post: the real minimum wage and poverty reduction
By Rodrigo Zeidan, Fundação Dom Cabral The debate over the minimum wage in the US is an interesting one. Wages have been falling in real terms for the last 30 years but there is strong resistance to...
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