Brake on wages among low paid; foot on the accelerator for the rich

Norwegian kroner State BudgetNorwegian kroner. Photo: Pixabay

From 2006 to 2015 overall wage increases among the population of Norway were 42.1 percent.

For the ten percent receiving the lowest wages, they increased by 24.2 percent, yet the ten per cent with the highest salaries had those raised by 46.4 percent.

A new report on the low paid from the Centre for Wage Determination shows that the lowest paid workers have received an increasingly smaller share of the pie since 1997, writes the newspaper Klassekampen.

In 1997, the 10 percent lowest paid workers earned, in total, 6.4 percent of all wages. In 2015, that was down to 5.2 percent. The 10 per cent who were paid best, increased their share during this same period, from 18.1 to 19.8 percent.

From 2008 to 2015, the lowest paid had a ‘real-wage’ increase (meaning after inflation is subtracted) at a modest 0.5 percent.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today