Monthly wage growth for workers in Bangladesh remained below the inflation rate for 15 months consecutively, suggesting that many people are having to reduce consumption to cope with increased financial distress.
In April, wages of low paid skilled and unskilled workers grew 7.23%, which was 2.01 percentage points below the inflation rate of 9.24% that month, the Wage Rate Index (WRI) of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) revealed.
The case was similar in March, when the wages of those workers grew 7.18%, which was 2.15 percentage points below the inflation rate of 9.33% that month.
The average monthly wage rate of low paid skilled and unskilled labourers is estimated from the pay scale of 44 occupations, including 11 in the agriculture sector, 22 in the industry sector and 11 in the service sector.
Last month, the wages of workers in agriculture grew by 7.28% while it was 6.93% and 7.6% respectively for those in the industry and service sectors.
In late March, the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (Sanem) published a survey that was conducted on lower-income groups with a sample of 1,600 households across eight divisions, where they found more than 96% of the people reduced their meat consumption in the last six months.
It said 88.22% of respondents have lessened their fish consumption while 77.06% and 81.43% have cut their egg and oil consumption respectively to cope with higher inflation.
The poorer households have also reduced their consumption of staple foods such as rice and wheat by 37.08% and 56.55% respectively, Sanem found.