Wages in Israel bucked international trends to rise in 2017, the latest Global Wage Report from the United Nations' International Labor Organization shows.
According to the report, wage growth worldwide slowed by 2.4% in 2016 and 1.8% in 2017. Leaving out China, whose immense population and growth rate have a major influence on the global average, the rate of wage growth slowed by 1.8% in 2016 and 1.1% in 2017.
Despite the slowdown in wage growth – which is the lowest since 2008 – Israel has seen its average national wage rise consistently for the past five years: by 1.4% in 2013; 2.7% in 2014; 2.6% in 2015; 2.9% in 2016; and 3% in 2017.
The rate of wage growth in Israel also performed well when compared to some of the strongest economies in the world. The average rate of wage growth in G-20 nations dropped to only 0.4% for 2017 (compared to Israel's 3% increase for the same year). Some developed countries, such as Spain and Italy, saw negative growth in their annual wages. The U.S. saw its average wage grow by only 0.7% in 2017, the same rate the U.S. recorded in 2016.
In general, Asian nations saw the biggest and most consistent growth in their average national wage, but even in those countries, the rate of growth slowed from 4.8% in 2016 to 3.5% in 2017.
