Longer hours ‘depress wages’

More slack in the labour force as people put in longer hours may be a factor in depressing wages, new research claims. Central Bank researchers set out to understand why wages have risen slowly despite the rapid unemployment drop.

Predicting that weekly wages will grow by only 3% next year, they found several factors were weighing on wages’ growth.

This is despite the number of people in employment was approaching the levels recorded before the onset of the economic crisis 10 years ago.