Kenyan workers' real wages 'lower now than 10 years ago'
Francis Atwoli, Central Organization of Trade Unions Secretary-General and a member of the International Labour Organization, at Uhuru Park Recreational grounds in Nairobi during Labour Day Celebrations on May 1, 2018. The country lags regionally in real-wage average growth rates, a study by the ILO shows. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- The fall in real wages was even steeper last year for Kenya, declining by 2.9 percent, the report notes.
- It can be inferred from the ILO report that Kenyan wage workers have not benefitted financially from the country’s economic expansion in recent years.
- The study does not present estimates for changes in earnings among workers in countries’ informal sectors.
NEW YORK,
With wages adjusted for inflation, Kenyan workers are earning less than they did 10 years ago, the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO) says in a report released on Monday.
The rate of change in real wages (a term used in the report to refer to inflation-adjusted monthly earnings) dropped by 1.6 percent in Kenya from 2008 to 2017, the ILO global study shows.
NO BENEFIT
The fall in real wages was even steeper last year for Kenya, declining by 2.9 percent, the report notes.
It can thus be inferred from the ILO report that Kenyan wage workers have not benefitted financially from the country’s economic expansion in recent years.
Kenya's gross domestic product grew by between five and six percent annually from 2013 through 2017, according to the World Bank.
The country lags regionally in real-wage average growth rates, the ILO study shows.
Among the 24 sub-Saharan countries included in the report, real wages increased 2.7 percent during the past five years.
Real-wage rates rose most sharply in that period in Senegal (32.3 percent), while falling most precipitously in Tanzania (-9.5 percent), the report shows.
NOMINAL WAGES
Citing the Kenyan National Bureau of Statistics as its source, the ILO reports that nominal wages (those not adjusted for inflation) have grown substantially in Kenya, rising from an average of Sh42,886 per month in 2013 to Sh57,008 last year.
The ILO report cautions that “wage employees in Africa represent only a limited proportion of these countries’ working populations.”
The study does not present estimates for changes in earnings among workers in countries’ informal sectors.
Although the new ILO report focuses on disparities in earnings between men and women, the study contains no data for the gender pay gap in Kenya specifically or in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.
Globally, the UN body says, women are paid about 20 percent less than men.
GENDER GAP
The causes for the gender gap are not fully understood, the ILO says.
But the report shows that motherhood brings about a wage penalty that can persist across a woman’s working life.
Fatherhood, by contrast, is generally associated with a wage premium, the study finds
Worldwide, the overall rate of growth in real wages slowed to 1.8 percent last year from 2.4 percent in 2016.
That is the lowest annual increase for the years since the global financial crisis of 2008, the ILO points out.
