Sinking wages and global labour glut: US needs to get schooled

Washington

THE long-sought rise in American wages is being suppressed by a global labour glut that is undermining policy makers' efforts to wring slack from the US job market.

The most effective way of combating this oversupply is to promote increased training and education of US workers so they can provide skills unavailable elsewhere to employers, according to experts who have studied the problem.

"With regions such as South Asia and Africa waiting on the fringes, the excess supply of labour is likely to be with us for many decades," Barry Bosworth, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in an interview via e-mail. "If Americans want further gains in their living standards, they will need to increase their skills." While the Federal Reserve has sought to reduce labour-market slack through the use o…