Labour income falls amid rising inequality: ILO

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned that the share of labour income, which represents the proportion of total income earned by workers in an economy, has experienced a decline over the past two decades by 1.6 percentage points. New estimates indicate that the labour income share continued to decrease since 2019, declining to 52.3pc in 2022 and remaining at that level in 2023 and 2024, according to ’World Employment and Social Outlook: September 2024 Update“, released on Wednesday. This is 0.6pps below the pre-pandemic level, and the decline, while modest in percentage points terms, represents a sizeable and persistent shortfall in labour income. As productivity has increased, labour income has grown significantly over these 20 years, even while the labour income share declined. Yet this decline puts upward pressure on inequality, the report notes.