2023: A Busy Year for WageIndicator

Living wages 

In November 2023 WageIndicator published Living Wages data for 150 countries, with one region per email address being freely accessible. WageIndicator is currently working together with a group of launch partners (big brand names) to publish Living Wages for all regions - for free. We have also released ten country-specific Living Wage videos.

Reports were issues in February and November on Living Wages and Living Income Worldwide.

In July 2023, for the first time, we delivered data covering the Single Income Earner household type, next to the Standard and Typical Family household types.

In October 2023, for the first time, we delivered a guidance benchmark alongside quarterly and yearly data.

We continue to grow yearly, and by January 2024 we will have benchmarks for 165 countries and the regions within. Haiti is the latest country. At the same time, the amount of countries and regions with a higher Minimum Wage then Living Wage is also growing.

Gig/Platform – with Valeria Tonella

Gigpedia was launched in March, in collaboration with Fairwork and the Leeds Index and provides an overview of available information about the global platform economy, including news, court cases, regulation, good practices, collective agreements, and labour standards, insights, visuals, and blogs.

Webinars: We featured several gig events throughout the year, including Women in Gig Work: Web-Based Work in March with 330 participants and A Level Playing Field for Gig Workers in October with 287 participants. Our upcoming event is Unpaid Labour in the gig economy, on 22 March 2024.

The Introduction to the Living Tariff Tool was made public on November 30, 2023. This is a tool developed in partnership with GIZ to help gig workers calculate fair wages based on accurate cost of living information and hidden and indirect costs like waiting times, cancellation fees, and non-payment by clients. The living tariff tool is being piloted in Pakistan, Kenya, and Indonesia in close cooperation with Centre for Labour Research, and WageIndicator teams. You can watch the instructive video on the Living Tariff Tool.

Seven episodes of The Gig Work Podcast have been produced and edited by Martijn Arets. We can highlight the following ones: The story behind WageIndicator, an interview with James Farrar (former Uber driver fighting platforms before the courts), and a conversation with Magalí Gurman (Glovo) about riders’ employment status.

The gig database covers companies, strikes, regulation, court cases, ratings, and good practices for around 60 countries (2021-2023).

Around 30 Flame interns, three Ahmadabad interns, one global intern, and two interns from Bucharest workedwith the Gigpedia team, with the outcome being the database filled with news from different countries worldwide, visuals, and blogs published on Gigpedia.

Spanish Newsletter: In November, we also released the first Spanish monthly gig newsletter titled Economía Gig to focus on Latin America.

On that occasion, we announced the collaboration with Nippy: as a worker tech platform, Nippy offers benefits and services to gig workers and monitors their activity to improve it. By combining this dataset with WageIndicator’s wage database and the Living Tariff tool, we hope to strengthen the efforts and enhance workers’ productivity and earnings.

Intern – with Shriya Methkupally

Reflecting on an eventful year, we've been fortunate to collaborate with talented interns and diverse institutions.

Throughout the year, our team was fortunate to welcome interns from Vietnam, thanks to the exceptional recruiting efforts of Hien and her team. In January, Generation 3.5, led by Hung, began with five interns, and we celebrated their journey with a farewell party in July. In April, Generation 4+5, comprising eight interns and four  team leaders, was led by Tam. October marked a farewell to Generation 4 – we bid adieu to six interns. In September, Generation 6, comprising three interns, joined us. The interns are consistently on top of their targets and are remarkable at overcoming challenges in creative ways.

Continuing our successful partnership with Bucharest University of Economic Studies, led by Hala, we welcomed five Master's students and eight Bachelor's students in March. They wrote news teasers, extracted and visualised salary guides, and created country factsheets, among many other tasks. Hala organized a farewell for them in May to highlight their outstanding contributions.

This summer marked the start of a new collaboration with Ahmedabad University. During this period, we were thrilled to onboard 25 interns in May, including one intern from FLAME. The interns brought diverse skill sets, and we had the opportunity to help them build these skills through the planned tasks and feedback. Subsequently, we had the chance to hear about their learnings and share highlights from their work during their farewell in July.

In October, our collaboration with FLAME University kicked off with 13 student managers and 71 interns, led by Omkar and Yashvi, for the WageIndicator-FLAME University Research Lab. The ongoing work is thriving, and it's worth noting the exceptional job done by the student managers in planning tasks and tracking progress. Their dedication has played a key role in keeping the lab running smoothly.

Excitingly, this year also marked a new collaboration with the University of Namibia, thanks to Dr. Ernest Tingum. In November, we welcomed five interns, who are actively working in the gig and data viz teams. The feedback has been positive so far, and we look forward to expanding this collaboration in the future.

Finally, throughout the year, we welcomed a total of six global interns to our team. Among them, four were from India, one from the University of Kassel, and another joined us from Lebanon. A heartfelt thanks to all our interns for helping us grow together!

Minimum Wages and Labour Law – with Iftikhar Ahmad and Kea Tijdens

WageIndicator Minimum Wages Database 

The WageIndicator Minimum Wages Database contains the minimum wage rates for more than 200 countries around the world. During 2023, the minimum wages were revised and updated in 240 regions and countries. The WageIndicator Minimum Wages database is the most extensive database on minimum wages in the world. You can check when the minimum wage was last updated in your country.

WageIndicator Labour Law Database

The WageIndicator Labour Law Database, grounded in Decent Work Checks, now has 120 countries. Of these, Algeria, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, Ivory Coast, Palestine, and Sudan have been added during 2023. Mauritania, Comoros, Syria, Tajikistan, and Georgia are already in progress and will be finalised during the first two months of 2024. During 2023, 110 countries have been updated, considering the reforms happening in these countries. Except for European countries, all changes have already been translated and included in WageIndicator websites. The European countries are being finalised and will be completed in December 2023. A classification of countries by regions is available here:

Classification of Countries in Labour Law Database

Africa - 41 countries (21 Anglophone, 17 Francophone & 3 Portuguese African countries)
Asia - 21 countries
America - 14 countries
Europe - 34 countries
Middle East - 10 countries

WageIndicator will be working on the third edition of the Labour Rights Index in 2024. Planning to launch it on 7 October (World Day for Decent Work), the Index will cover 145 countries (LRI 2022 had 135 countries) and probable new questions will include the labour inspection system and social dialogue.  

Research – with Marta Kahancová and Nina Holičková

With the aim to strengthen its global presence, in 2023 the WageIndicator research team was working hard on various research projects covering various aspects of collective bargaining and working conditions. These include:

The BARCOVID project studied if and how stipulations in collective agreements changed with the COVID-19 pandemic in EU 27 and five candidate countries with a focus on collective agreement renewals and covid-relevant clauses, such as firing, occupational health and safety, and teleworking. After two years of original research, the project was successfully completed in June 2023. 

BARMETAL studies the impact of digitalisation, automatisation and decarbonisation on collective bargaining in the metal sector. The target of collecting and analyzing 75 collective agreements from the metal sector was quickly completed and the research team uncovered a diversity in the impact of technological and environmental changes on collective bargaining across the studied 12 EU countries and one candidate country. 

BARWAGE, a project implemented between 2022 and 2024, quantifies the wage-setting arenas in EU27 and further analyses wage determination via collective bargaining and other methods of wage setting in nine selected EU countries. Within this project, the WageIndicator database of collective agreements was extended by over 100 collective agreements that were annotated and analysed, reaching the target of 400 agreements.

Level Up is a project commissioned by UNI Europa, the service sectors' trade union at the European level. The team carried out research and delivered an analysis of why multi-employer bargaining yields better outcomes than single-employer bargaining. A large number of CBAs in the services sector were analysed to show that multi-employer bargaining is more desired for concluding CBA stipulations regarding wages, paid leave, and various benefits. 

Cooperation between labour inspectorates and NGOs - this research supported the European Platform for Tackling Undeclared Work, which is a permanent working group of the European Labour Authority. Desk research showed over 57 examples across Europe where labour inspectorates cooperated with NGOs to avoid human trafficking, labour exploitation, developing capacities of enforcement authorities, and contributing to better labour market transparency. The findings were delivered at the Plenary Meeting of the Platform and were well received by participants from across all of Europe. 

Identifying Collective Bargaining Practices on artificial intelligenceresponds to increasing interest in the analysis of how work is being transformed under the influence of artificial intelligence and algorithmic management. The analysis of over 30 CBAs that became part of the WageIndicator CBA database allowed to develop a battery of variables on the use of AI that can be used for the analysis of any future CBAs that will be integrated into the database. This way, it is not only research outputs that emerge but also a more advanced research infrastructure and analytical tools which place the work of WageIndicator at the top global level.

Besides the mentioned projects, the research team continued its earlier work on wage clauses in CBAs, a project commissioned by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). We are also happy to announce that the tradition of the 'BAR' research projects (abbreviation from 'bargaining') continues: in 2024, two new projects will start with WageIndicator participation:

BARSERVICE will map social partners and bargaining practices in the services sector in support of UNI Europa's attempt to organise locally oriented capacity-building training to enhance trade union participation as well as employer stability. The countries selected for the project (six EU Member States and three candidate countries) are the ones in which industrial relations in the services sector are the least researched and the project aims to contribute to identifying mitigation strategies for sector challenges, such as undeclared work, through knowledge-building.

BARTIME - besides wages, working time is a key topic that is subject to collective regulations. The BARTIME project will study wage stipulations for non-standard hours in collective agreements in a comparative perspective for the 24 EU countries in which collective agreements are available. The project starts in 2024 and will last two years.

Social Media – with Vasudha Ghai

2023 was a year of change for Social Media at WageIndicator. We took this year to reflect - on our voice, our branding, our target audience, our platforms and our communication as a whole. We embarked on a transformative journey, making it a year of deep reflection, brainstorming, and strategic planning. Engaged in numerous meetings and collaborative sessions, the team meticulously laid the groundwork for an exciting future. Amidst the wealth of ideas, decisions, and plans taking shape, the department is eagerly gearing up to unveil a host of initiatives aimed at elevating WageIndicator to new heights in the coming year.

As always the interns remained integral to our social media development, contributing fresh perspectives and energy. We also took bold steps by consolidating our Facebook pages and refreshing our branding for a more cohesive identity. 

As the blueprint for 2024 unfolds, the team is energised and anticipates ramping up our social media presence with innovative campaigns and engaging content. This ambitious undertaking calls for the whole organisation's enthusiastic support to amplify the impact and reach of our mission.

A heartfelt thank you to our individual Social Media Managers! Your dedication, creativity, and strategic prowess have woven a vibrant tapestry across our platforms, elevating WageIndicator's online presence. Your passion for our mission shines through, making a lasting impact on workers worldwide. Cheers to your invaluable contributions!