Oxfam expects the income gap between senior executives and employees to increase in 2022 | Economy

This is the result of a survey conducted by Oxfam ahead of Global Action Day. So the organization fighting world hunger is calling for a permanent tax increase for the richest 1 percent.

One billion workers in fifty countries will earn an average of $685 less in 2022 due to higher inflation. That’s a collective loss of $746 billion (nearly €680 billion) in real wages, compared to if wages kept up with inflation. According to Oxfam, staff worked an average of six days “for free” last year because their wages lagged behind inflation.

And women and girls spend at least 380 billion hours each month on unpaid care work. Female employees often have to work fewer paid hours or have to stop working altogether due to the burden of unpaid work in the healthcare sector. Oxfam said they continue to face gender discrimination, harassment and low pay for work of equal value with men.

While the board members tell us to keep wages low, they give themselves and their shareholders huge bonuses. Most people work longer for less and can’t keep up with the cost of living. “Years of austerity and attacks on unions have widened the gap between the rich and us,” said Amitabh Behar, Interim Executive Director of Oxfam International.

Meanwhile, shareholder earnings reached a record high of nearly $1.6 trillion in 2022. That’s 10 percent real growth compared to 2021. American companies paid out $574 billion to their shareholders, more than double the total real wage cuts for American workers.

Employees in the Netherlands took a real pay cut of 6.6% in 2022. As a result, they lost an average of €2,791 and effectively worked “for free” for about eleven days because wages did not keep up with inflation. This brings the total losses of employees in the Netherlands to approximately 26 billion euros. On the other hand, dividends paid to shareholders increased by 10 percent in real terms.