英文部分选自经济学人20240203期财经板块



Finance and economics | Prices and wages
财经板块 | 物价与薪资
Your pay is still going up too fast
高速涨薪一往无前
Why the last part of the inflation fight may be the hardest
为何说抗击通胀“最后一公里”最为艰难
Central bankers are entering the final stretch. Rich-world prices are rising by 5.4% year on year, down from a peak of 10.7% in October 2022. Although this is impressive progress, the last part of their quest—getting inflation from 5.4% to official targets of around 2%—could be the most difficult. That is because labour markets are not co-operating.
各国央行正进入最后冲刺阶段。在富裕国家，价格涨幅由2022年10月峰值的同比10.7%一路下降至如今的5.4%。尽管进展喜人，但从5.4%再到各国央行2%的通胀目标，却可能是最困难的“最后一公里”，因为劳动力市场并不配合。
补充资料：
OECD以CPI衡量的同比通胀率（整体通胀率）数据
https://www.oecd.org/sdd/prices-ppp/consumer-prices-oecd-updated-11-january-2024.htm
 6park.com
Until recently employers wanted to hire many more workers than they could find, resulting in an unprecedented surge in unfilled vacancies (see chart). In 2022-23 Google searches related to “labour shortage” jumped to their highest-ever level. With plenty of other options, workers asked for big pay rises. Year-on-year wage growth across the rich world doubled from its pre-covid rate to close to 5% (see chart), adding to firms’ costs and in turn encouraging them to raise the prices they charged consumers.
就在前不久，雇主能招到的劳动力还远不能满足其用人需求，导致职位空缺空前激增（见图）。2022年至2023年，与 “劳动力短缺 ”相关的谷歌搜索量跃升至历史最高水平。劳动者拥有诸多选择，因此要求大幅加薪。富裕国家的工资同比增长率是疫情前的2倍，达到5%（见图）。这增加了公司成本，反过来又促使公司向消费者涨价。
 6park.com
In order to get inflation under control, wage growth therefore had to come back down. Given weak productivity growth across the rich world, a 2% inflation target is probably achievable only if nominal wages grow by 3% a year or less. Central bankers hoped that by raising interest rates they would cause demand for labour to fall—ideally cooling wage inflation without wrecking people’s livelihoods.
因此，为了控制通胀，工资增长必须回落。鉴于富裕国家生产力增长乏力，只有将名义工资涨幅控制在每年3%以下，2% 的通胀目标才有可能实现。各国央行当时希望的是，通过提高利率来降低对劳动力的需求，从而在不破坏民生的情况下让涨薪潮冷却下来。
备注：
名义工资：Nominal wage, or money wage, is the literal amount of money you get paid per hour or by salary. For example, if your employer pays you $12.00 an hour for your work, your nominal wage is $12.00. Similarly, if your employer pays you a salary of $48,000 a year, then your nominal wage would be $48,000.名义工资和 实际工资 的区别。名义工资即 货币工资 ，是指工人出卖劳动力所得到的货币数量。实际工资 是指工人用 货币工资 实际买到的各类生活资料和服务的数量。
The first part of the plan has worked. Demand for labour (ie, filled jobs plus unfilled vacancies) is now only 0.4% higher than the supply of workers, down from 1.6%. Searches for “labour shortage” have fallen by a third. Almost everywhere you are less likely to see “help wanted” signs.
计划的前半部分已取得成效。目前，劳动力需求（即已招到人的岗位和尚未招到人的岗位加起来）仅比劳动力供给高出0.4%，而先前这一数字为1.6%。“劳动力短缺”的搜索量下降了三分之一。“招工”启事也越来越少见了。
注释：
Help wanted: related to or being advertisements for jobs that employers are seeking to fill
Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/help%20wanted
Lower demand for labour has also caused surprisingly little damage to people’s employment prospects. We estimate that, over the past year, falling vacancies have accounted for the entire decline in labour demand across the rich world. During the same period the number of people actually in work has increased. The unemployment rate across the rich world remains below 5%. Some countries are even beating records. In Italy the share of working-age people in a job recently hit an all-time high—the country has swapped la dolce vita for la laboriosa vita.
出乎意料的是，劳动力需求下降对人们的就业前景带来的影响微乎其微。据本刊估计，过去一年里，富裕国家劳动力需求的下降完全是由职位空缺数量下降所带来。与此同时，实际就业人数有所增加。富裕国家的失业率仍低于5%，一些国家甚至创下了历史新纪录。在意大利，适龄劳动力人口的就业比例最近创下了历史新高——在这里，“劳碌生活”（ la laboriosa vita）已取代了“甜蜜生活”（la dolce vita）。
注释：
1.la dolce vita: the sweet life
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dolce-vita 
2.la laboriosa vita: the laborious life
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/spanish-english/laborioso
Nevertheless, despite falling labour demand, there is less evidence of the final part of the plan: lower wage inflation. Although American pay growth has subsided from more than 5.5% year on year to around 4.5%, that is probably still too high for the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target. And elsewhere there is little sign of progress. In recent quarters wage growth across the rich world has hovered at 5% year on year. British wage growth is more than 6%. “Very early indications for January show negotiated pay deals slowing only modestly,” reported analysts at JPMorgan Chase, a bank, last week. Euro-area pay is growing similarly fast.
然而，尽管劳动力需求已然下降，但央行计划的后半部分——减缓工资增长却似乎没能落地。尽管美国薪资增长从每年5.5%有余回落至约4.5%，但相对于美联储2%的通胀目标来说可能还是太高了点。其他地区的情况更是进展甚微。最近几个季度，富裕国家的工资增长率同比仍维持在5%的水平。英国的工资增长率超6%。上周，摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的分析师报告称：1月份的早期迹象表明谈判工资增速仅略有放缓。欧元区的薪资增长同样飞速。
Is high wage growth, and thus above-target inflation, now baked into the economic cake? Some evidence suggests it is—especially in Europe. Spanish workers, for instance, have used their extra bargaining power to change their contracts, so that the share of workers whose pay is indexed to the inflation rate has risen from 16% in 2014-21 to 45% last year. A recent study by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, on Belgium worries about “more persistent inflation due to wage indexation”.
难道说高工资增长进而导致高于2%的通胀，对经济已经是板上钉钉的事了？一些证据表明，情况确实如此，尤其是在欧洲。比如，西班牙工人已经利用额外的议价能力变更他们的合同，工资增长与通胀率挂钩的工人比例从2014至2021年的16%升至去年的45%。主要由富裕国家构成的经济合作与发展组织（OECD）最近做了一项对比利时的研究，其中表达了关于“工资增长与通胀挂钩会导致更持久的通货膨胀”的担忧。
注释：
1. baked in the cake：表示某些重要的信息如未经证实的新闻报道或收益预测，已经被考虑并包含在证券的市场价格中；也可以指任何可能无法解决或不可避免的复杂情况，比如经济衰退。
source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/baked-cake.asp 
2.OECD：Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development，是全球38个市场经济国家组成的政府间国际组织，总部设在法国巴黎犬舍城堡。
More generous wage agreements today could mean higher inflation tomorrow, leading in turn to even more generous agreements. Across the rich world strikes have become more common as workers seek higher wages. Last year America lost almost 17m working days to stoppages, more than in the previous ten years combined. Britain has also seen a surge in industrial action. On January 30th Aslef, a union for train drivers, began a series of walkouts, to the dismay of commuters.
工资谈判可能意味着恶性循环，今日慷慨的工资协议或将导致明日更高的通胀，进而导致下一轮更加慷慨的涨薪协议。在富裕国家，寻求更高工资的罢工变得越来越普遍。去年，美国因为罢工损失了接近1700万个工作日，比之前10年的总和还要多。英国的全行业罢工数量也在激增。1月30日，英国火车司机与司炉联合会（ASLEF）组织了一系列罢工，令乘客大为恼火。
注释：
1. stoppage ：When there is a stoppage, people stop working because of a disagreement with their employers. 罢工
2. Aslef：火车司机与司炉联合会（Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Fireman）
3. to the dismay of：令人感到沮丧
There is, however, a more optimistic interpretation of these developments. Just as in 2021-22, when wages took a while to accelerate after labour demand rose, so today they could take time to lose speed. After all, companies and workers renegotiate wages infrequently—often annually—meaning that workers may only slowly realise that they have less bargaining power than before. Indeed, estimates for America published by Goldman Sachs, another bank, suggest that it can take a year or so for declines in labour demand to show up in lower wage growth—suggesting that the final stretch of disinflation will be annoyingly slow, but will pass.
然而，我们也可以从更为乐观的角度解读这些新变化。2021和2022年间，劳动力需求上升后，工资过了一段时间才跟着加速增长；同样地，如今涨薪可能也需要一段时间才能减速。毕竟，企业和工人薪酬谈判的频率不高，通常是按年开展，这意味着工人可能只能慢慢意识到他们的议价能力不如从前。事实上，另一家银行高盛（Goldman Sachs）预计，美国劳动力需求的下降可能需要一年左右才能表现为工资增速的下降——这表明去通胀的最后一公里将有如龟速，令人恼火，但行将必至。

贴主:不知笔名于2024_02_15 20:36:49编辑