ILO: 10% of workers receive 48,9% of total global pay

The Global Labour Income Share and Distribution. The ILO dataset, developed by the ILO Department of Statistics, contains data from 189 countries and is drawn from the world’s largest collection of harmonized labour force survey data.

Ten per cent of workers receive 48.9 per cent of total global pay, while the lowest-paid 50 per cent of workers receive just 6.4 per cent, a new ILO dataset reveals.

What’s more, the lowest 20 per cent of income earners – around 650 million workers – earn less than 1 per cent of global labour income, a figure that has hardly changed in 13 years.

The new dataset shows that overall global labour income inequality has fallen since 2004. However, this is not due to reductions in inequality within countries – at the national level, pay inequality is actually increasing.

Rather, it is because of increasing prosperity in large emerging economies, namely China and India. Overall, the findings say, income inequality remains pervasive in the world of work.

Labour Income Share

The Labour Income Share and Distribution dataset , developed by the ILO Department of Statistics, contains data from 189 countries and is drawn from the world’s largest collection of harmonized labour force survey data.

It offers two new indicators for major trends in the world of work, at national, regional and global levels. One provides the first internationally comparable figures of the share of GDP that goes to workers – rather than capital – through wages and earnings. The second looks at how labour income is distributed.