Labor Productivity And Real Wages In Macedonia: An Overview Before And After The Global Economic Crisis

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between the labor productivity and real net wages in Macedonia at the level of the whole economy, and in the sectors of industry and agriculture, both, in the period 2006-2015, i.e. shortly before the commencement and after the Great financial and economic crisis. The paper starts from the assumption that greater labor productivity causes changes in real net wages which are in the same direction. Studies that are previously made show that there is an expressed quantitative relationship between the labor productivity and real net wages in Macedonia in the period 1995-2003. But results obtained in this paper show that the Great financial and economic crisis has influence on this relations. Thus, quantitative relationship between labor productivity and real net wages in the analyzed period is very low, and even that their relationships are with the opposite sign. This leads to the conclusion that during and the period after the crisis, changes in labor productivity did not have an impact on the real net wages in Macedonia, or they had a little impact, and in some cases the impact is in the opposite direction. Taking into consideration that in the period during and after crisis are recorded small but permanent increasing of the wages in the country, it is obvious that such increase is not due to changes in labor productivity but more to other factors.