With the current economic crisis, businesses have become more cautious in hiring and expenditure. Hence it comes as no surprise that 2008 has seen a smaller wage increase amongst the workforce in the private sector, as compared to the year before.

The 2008 wage report released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) highlights that within the private sector, total wages (which includes bonuses) increased by merely 4.2%, compared to 5.9% in 2007; while bonuses dropped to an average of 2.31 months, compared to 2.36 months in 2007.

After taking into account the rise in Consumer Price Index by 6.5% in 2008, real wages actually decreased by 2.3% – a stark contrast to the increase of 3.8% the year before.

Amongst the three categories of employees, rank-and-file employees experienced the steepest decline in wage increase (5.4% to 3.2%), followed by senior employees (6.1% to 4.8%), and junior management (6.9% to 5.8%).

Visit MOM for more details on the 2008 wage report.