Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn A. Wilkins discusses developments in the Canadian labour market and factors that may help explain why wage growth is slower than expected.
The literature highlights that labour market churn, including job-to-job transitions, is a key element of wage growth. Using microdata from the Labour Force Survey, we compute measures of labour market churn and compare these with pre-crisis averages to assess implications for wage growth.
Since the global financial crisis, advanced-economy wage growth has been generally low relative to past recoveries, especially after accounting for the evolution of labour market conditions over this period. This paper investigates a variety of potential explanations for this weakness, drawing on findings from the literature as well as analysis of recent labour market data in advanced economies.
We estimate an aggregate elasticity of substitution between capital and labor near or below one, which implies that capital deepening cannot explain the global decline in labor's share. Our methodology derives from transition paths in the neo-classical growth model.