ILO pinpoints considerable slowdown in rate of real wage growth. - The global economic and financial crisis has provoked considerable slowdown in the rate of real wage growth at an international level, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its “Global Wages Report 2010/11”. On the basis of official national statistics from 115 countries and territories, the ILO estimates that average monthly wage growth fell by 2.8% before the crisis in 2007 to 1.5% in 2008 and 1.6% in 2009. Excluding China (where official statistics only cover over “urban units” linked to the state), the report calculates that real wage growth declined from 2.2% in 2007 to 0.8% in 2008 and 0.7% in 2009. While the rate of wage growth slowed in virtually all countries, it turned negative in more than a quarter of the countries and territories included in our sample in 2008, and in one-fifth in 2009. The ILO notes considerable regional variations in wage growth. In advanced countries, the report estimates that, after having grown at about 0.8% per year before the crisis, real wages actually fell by -0.5% at the onset of the crisis in 2008 before growing at a rate of 0.6% in 2009. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, real wage growth fell from an average of about 17.0% in 2007 (when wages were still recovering from the collapse that took place in the early stages of transition) to 10.6% in 2008 and to -2.2% in 2009. In Central and Eastern Europe, real wage growth fell from 6.6% in 2007 to 4.6% in 2008 and -0.1% in 2009. In Asia, real wages have grown in excess of 7% throughout the period 2006-09, with rates of 7.2% in 2007 to 7.1% in 2008 and 8.0% in 2009. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is estimated that real wage growth slowed from 3.3% in 2007 to 1.9% in 2008 and 2.2% in 2009. For Africa, provisional estimates indicate that in 2007 real monthly wages grew at about 1.4% before declining to 0.5% in 2008 and rebounding to 2.4% in 2009. In the Middle East, it is too early even for a tentative estimate on wage growth in 2008 and 2009, as too few countries have reported their wage data so far. However, available data for earlier years suggest that wages of workers in the Middle East (a large share of whom are migrant workers) did not increase very rapidly even before the crisis. (I.L./transl.fl)