2021/10/16 Economist 經濟學人
The rich world is
used to wages and prices growing slowly. In the decade after the global
financial crisis, inflation rarely exceeded central banks’ targets, and wages
seemed unable to grow much faster. The spending power of average hourly pay in
Britain, Italy and Japan was about the same at the start of the pandemic as it
had been in the mid-2000s. The fact that American wage growth averaged 2.9%
from 2015 to 2019 while average inflation stayed below 2% seemed a rare
triumph.( 薪資成長率要壓贏 通膨率)
The causes of
higher prices are clear: rampant demand for goods has met bottlenecks in supply
chains, and energy prices have soared. Wage growth is more mysterious. In most
places employment is lower than it was before the pandemic. Yet workers seem
unwilling or unable to take the abundant jobs that are on offer. The labour
shortage may reflect how hard it is to move between professions and places as
economies go through an unusual adjustment. Fear of the virus and the lingering
effects of state support for household incomes could be keeping workers idle.
The pandemic may even have led some people to put family and leisure above
their careers.
A hazy
understanding of what is driving wages up is making life harder for central
banks. Most have argued that high inflation is temporary. But excessive wage
growth could be the next factor to drive up prices, especially if workers
demand higher pay in the expectation of future rises in the cost of living—an
insurance that exacerbates the very thing it seeks to offset.
To avoid enduring inflation, some combination of three things must happen.
1.Firms could absorb higher wages in their margins rather than raising prices.請廠商犧牲營業利潤, 自行吸收工資上漲( 加薪), 這忽略人性現實, 根本不可能. (除非政府強制規定提高薪資)
2.Productivity growth could make higher increases in real-wages sustainable.
( 理論上行得通, 但是你要等SaaS企業靈活彈性的經營提升效率, 大數據分析降低成本, 提升生產力需要2-3年效果才出的來, 你覺得目前股市能等3年....大家生產力都提高了, 不會再跌 ....... !! )
Or idle workers could
return to the labour force, dampening wage growth. ( 美國許多失敗組做一輩子低薪工人, 被歧視20年, 現在政府救濟金高過他們15美元/小時工薪, 你覺得他們還回的去 !!)
參考華裔女導演趙婷的作品《游牧人生》一舉拿下最佳影片、最佳導演、最佳女演員3項大獎
In the popular imagination workers’ share of the economic pie has room to grow at the expense of profits. But recent research suggests that labour’s share of the value created by firms has in fact been fairly stable in most rich countries during recent decades( 最近十幾年來歐美國家工資已經很少再調漲 ! )
We estimate that it has already risen by one percentage point on average in big rich countries during the pandemic. There may not be very much scope for further increases.( 最近已經漲1%, 再漲很難)
Higher productivity growth is a reasonable hope. Output per worker has risen in America since the start of the pandemic. ( 真的ㄚ ! 難怪Howard Marks 說新科技讓通膨不會漲, 那大家拭目以待, 看生產力是否追得上物價通膨 ....)
The digitisation brought about by the
pandemic should boost living standards, particularly if it reduces the need to
live near expensive cities to get good jobs. The trouble is that time lags make
it hard to base policy on productivity trends. They are hard to measure in real
time and it takes about 18 months for central banks’ decisions to fully feed
through into the economy.( 等18個月央行重新制定工資政策, 看DJ, Nasdaq能否等18個月 .... )
That means
policymakers should focus on the labour supply. Its recovery has been
disappointing so far. There is surprisingly little sign that the end of
emergency programmes, such as America’s extended unemployment insurance and
Britain’s furlough scheme, has increased the number of people looking for work.(希望如此, 顯示人性美好) Perhaps, though, as bank accounts run dry and the pandemic abates, some slack
will reappear in 2022, causing wage growth to slow. Even more than usual,
monetary policymakers should keep their eyes fixed on jobs.
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