When Germany’s largest labour union, IG Metall, agreed to a 5.2 per cent wage rise last November, monetary policymakers breathed a great sigh of relief. As reported in Financial Times, this deal finally eased central banks’ inconvenient wage-price spiral fears.
The fear that wage increases will lead to price increases (and hence inflation) is quite widespread. We see that not only the Germans but also the British live with the same concern. Bank of England President Andrew Bailey says the wage bargain needs to be “restrained” or things will get out of hand. Jason Furman, who was the Director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, is also clear: Increasing wages also increases prices. According to Furman, this is “basic micro and common sense.”
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said they would look at the increase in wages to see if they would continue to raise interest rates in Europe. Last May, Lagarde rejected bank employees’ desire to link wage increases to consumer price increases and wrote that this was “not acceptable and desirable”.
Klaas Knot, president of the Bank of the Netherlands, who has been skeptical about wage increases at the level of inflation, said they should be on high alert for any “feedback loop” to wage and price increases, but added that current wage developments do not provide clear evidence that they are entering a wage-price spiral in the eurozone.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has made the most explicit statement. In explaining why they’re raising interest rates; Powell makes it clear that they want to reduce demand and lower wages. Powell thinks they can do all this without slowing the economy and putting it in recession. However, clearly, interest rate hike aims to reduce the bargaining power of the working class and suppress wages by increasing unemployment.
What is the wage-price spiral?
The technical wage-price spiral recipe: at least three out of four consecutive quarters have a wage-price spiral if both consumer prices and nominal wages increase. To give a more concise definition, price increase triggers the wage increase, and wage increase causes the capital owner to increase the prices, and so on.
The debt between Thomas Weston, a leader of the carpenter’s union, and Karl Marx at the International Working Men’s Association in 1865 is the historical example of this issue. Just like the central banks argue today, Weston said that capitalists reflected the increase in wages to increase in prices to protect their profits; increasing prices would reduce the purchasing power of workers and thus keep real wages in place. That is, Watson concluded that a struggle or bargain for wage increases was useless.
Marx’s answer to this is summarized in the manuscript we know as Value, Price, Profit. Marx presents three arguments against Weston: First, wage increases come to the fore not out of the blue, but usually as a reaction to rising prices. Second, wages don’t cause inflation, but multiple factors influence it: The size of production, the productive forces of labor, the value of money, fluctuations in market prices, and the different phases of industrial cycles. So, for example, under the condition that wages remain the same, a change in the amount of money in the market (or the value of money) can trigger inflation. Or, again, a change in labor efficiency (i.e., productivity) has a direct impact on commodity prices, provided wages remain the same.
Moreover, according to Marx, it is true that a general rise in wage levels reduces overall profit rates, but this does not directly affect the prices of commodities. Capitalists and their ideologists object to the increase in wages, not because prices will increase, but because profits will decrease. The physical limit here is to provide the means of livelihood required for the employee working today to work tomorrow. However, Marx says that in some examples, the wage received by the workers can be pushed below the minimum subsistence. Such a reduce in labor costs is compensated by charity on national scope or laws on supporting the poor. Hence, the question of how to detect wages and profits is answered dynamically, not statically, and the answer is determined by the opposing classes’ struggles and balances of power.
It will happen again: The claim that workers’ “excessive” demands for wages will lead to inflation is an assumption raised by the capitalist and his ideologists, who know that their profits will decrease. Now, it is time talk about the cracks on this front.
IMF’s confession
IMF economists are finding it very difficult to find the evidence they have been looking for from history for a wage-price spiral. A recently published article examines wage-price spirals in the last 60 years of advanced economies.
The conclusion reached by IMF economists is that wage-price spirals are difficult to find in recent historical records, at least when they are defined as a continuous increase in prices and wages. Moreover, the IMF has even more difficulty in finding the wage-price spiral in other historical periods when real wages has fallen like today. What happens is the nominal wage increases that only partially replace the real wage loss.
The examples found by the economists showing fall in real wages and tight labour market as experienced today, often prioritize a period of falling inflation and rising nominal wages. Thus, as economists describe it as a “surprise,” sustained wage and price increases in only a small part of the example are being rolled over to the next period. As a result, the IMF finds that the rise in nominal wages cannot necessarily be taken as a sign that a wage-price spiral period has begun.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) also confirms this situation. In the first half of 2022, global monthly wages declined by 0.9 per cent in real terms. When wages in developed countries are separated from wages in developing countries, the ILO report shows that real wages in developed G20 countries decreased by 2.2 per cent, while in developing countries they increased by only 0.8 per cent. Looking at the United States and Canada, it is understood that real wages decreased by 3.2 per cent in the first half of this year.
The OECD report complements this statement. The report, which includes third-quarter data, suggests real wages decline in 31 of 32 major countries in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period the previous year.
President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Mary C. Daly also has had to admit that one of the most fundamental elements of the wage-price spiral is that the rising wage phenomenon has not emerged with inflation.
The ILO says that inflation is not caused by wage increases, but by the Ukrainian war and the global energy crisis.
Sources of inflation
Paul Donovan, the chief economist of UBS, one of the world’s largest asset managers, reminds that real wages are falling globally, pointing out that the Fed’s wage-price spiral thesis is not correct.
According to Donovan, the main source of today’s inflation is the excessive increase in profits. If inflation comes from profit rather than labor, says Donovan, central banks should look for other ways alternative to shrinking demand based on increasing unemployment.
A graphic published by the Economy Policy Institute last April provides the picture. Unit labour cost constituted 61.8 per cent of the increase in unit prices in non-financial companies between 1979-2019. Between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022, this rate decreased to 7.9 per cent. The main factor driving the increase in unit prices is profit with 53.9 percent. It is composed of non-work input prices with 38.3 percent.
So, what else is among the sources of inflation? The decrease in supply chains and labor productivity during the COVID period and the inadequate supply afterwards is a reason. Zero COVID policies in China and the subsequent Russia-Ukraine war also has caused disruptions in global supply chains and cost increases. Sanctions against Russia have also led to an exorbitant rise in global energy prices.
Moreover, in Britain, for example, service providers that distribute to retail energy companies and are often owned by large hedge funds and private equity companies can make profits of up to 40 per cent. These companies, known as the “Big Six,” have almost completely monopolized energy supplies. 99 per cent of domestic and small business customers depend on the Big Six. When the huge profits of international energy monopolies such as BP, Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Total is added, the picture is completed. The UK energy distribution companies, which have been privatized since the 1980s, work for profit and households suffer for it. The figure says it all: The Big Six distributed a £23 billion dividend to shareholders. That’s almost six times the tax the Six have been paying over the last decade.
On the other hand, excessive profit rates in 2021 are expected to decrease with the rise in interest rates. It is certain that there will be a slowdown in the profits and therefore investments driven by the increases in energy and raw material prices last year. The downward trend in large tech companies that made huge profits during the pandemic period, layoffs, and the difficulty in accessing finance also indicate that recession is likely in advanced economies next year.
Moreover, since the source of inflation is not “excessive demand” but weak supply, central banks have nothing to do with it. In addition to the disruption of supply chains, the Ukrainian war, and anti-Russian sanctions, decrease in profitability, declining labour productivity and investment appetite do not seem to match supply with demand. While recruitment in the United States is still in full swing, the lack of pace in GDP growth suggests that the problem of labour productivity in developed countries remains. The emergence of a sustained and downward demand shock in the world system therefore seems preordained.
