Real wages increase two per cent last year

Wages per full-time equivalent increased by 4.6 per cent in 1997, according to preliminary figures from the national accounts. Corrected for growth in the consumer price index, real wages grew by an average of two per cent.

The estimated growth in real wages in 1997 was higher than the average in the 1990s, which is about 1.5 per cent. Growth in real wages the year before was 3.1 per cent, by far the highest in 20 years. The high growth in real wages in 1996 must be seen in the light of that year's unusually low growth in the consumer price index.

In 1979-1989 average growth in real wages was only 0.1 per cent, i.e. far less than in the 1990s. The beginning and end of the 1980s saw several years of real decline in wages because average working hours declined in the 1980s, and some of the income growth was taken out in the form of a reduction in working time instead of wages.

Source

National accounts, 1997.
The statistics were published in Economic Analyses no. 1/98 and will be published in the Official Statistics of Norway (NOS) National Statistics of Accounts. For more information, contact: Stein Hansen, tel. +47 21 09 48 78, e-mail: sth@ssb.no, or Tor Skoglund, tel. +47 21 09 45 06, e-mail: tsk@ssb.no.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 7, 1998