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RTX165U36 Dec. 2013Seattle, UNITED STATESDemonstrators stage a rally after a long march from Sea-Tac to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 for fast-food workers at City Hall in Seattle, Washington December 5, 2013. Fast-food workers in hundreds of U.S. cities staged a day of rallies on Thursday to demand higher wages, saying the pay was too low to feed a family and forced most to accept public assistance.
Reuters/David Ryder
Workers want higher wages, and their heads of state do too.

Why the leaders of the two largest developed economies are begging companies to raise pay

By Tim Fernholz

US president Barack Obama asked corporations to “do what you can to raise your employees’ wages” in his annual agenda-setting State of the Union speech on Jan. 28. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has spent the last year asking businesses there to pay workers more.

Neither leader has seen much traction, for obvious reasons: Higher salaries for workers eat into corporate profits, and with high unemployment in the US and low labor force participation in Japan, there isn’t the labor scarcity needed to force companies to pay their workers better. So why are they pursuing this quixotic task?

In a word: deflation.


Wage increases would help create positive inflation, but equally important, they would ameliorate stagnant incomes seen in both Japan and the US in recent years and goose domestic demand. Japanese wages have been falling since 2000, while US wages still haven’t come close to regaining their pre-crisis highs.

Tim Fernholz