Hit by the pandemic, average wages in a majority of countries fell or grew more slowly in the first half of 2020, the International Labour Organization said in a report on Wednesday, noting women and low-paid workers have been disproportionately affected by the crisis.

Although the impacts of the pandemic, especially the wide lockdown, made statistics collection so hard that it is too early to obtain a full picture of the wages and labor markets changes during the COVID-19 crisis, case studies and early data still revealed some changes, according to the Global Wage Report 2020-21.

Among the countries for which short-term statistics are available, about two-thirds of them showed decreasing wages or slower average wage growth, while in the rest of the countries including Brazil and the U.S., average wages took a surprising jump in statistics, mostly due to the loss of lower-paying jobs instead of an actual pay rise, the report said.

Some vulnerable groups took more risks from the crisis. For example, without subsidies, women would have lost 8.1 percent of their wages in the second quarter of 2020, compared with 5.4 percent for men, the report said with estimation made based on a sample of 28 European countries.

Data from the same sample also showed that without subsidies, half of the lowest paid workers would have lost an estimated 17.3 percent of their wages.

"The growth in inequality created by the COVID-19 crisis threatens a legacy of poverty and social and economic instability that would be devastating," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder was quoted in the report as saying.

"Our recovery strategy must be human-centered. We need adequate wage policies that take into account the sustainability of jobs and enterprises, and also address inequalities and the need to sustain demand," he said.

In the four years preceding the pandemic, ILO found that among the 136 countries it looked into, the global real wage growth fluctuated between 1.6 and 2.2 percent, largely driven by China and other emerging economies in Asia, the Pacific and Eastern Europe.

(Cover: CFP)