The World Economic Forum, Davos 2023

The World Economic Forum is holding its usual event in Davos, Switzerland, this week, from 16 to 20 January 2023, to be attended by over 2,500 delegates. Under the banner of “Cooperation in a Fragmented World,” political and business leaders will focus on economic instability, uncertainty, the energy crisis, growing inflation rates and climate change. As always, we expect the discussions held at Davos to be both reflective and influential.

To mark the occasion and feed into the debate, we have written a report entitled “Inflation, wages and the risk of a wage-price spiral in 2023”, including a survey of wage indexation in 27 of our member countries. In the report, we look at many of the issues being debated in Davos, such as economic uncertainty, inflation trends worldwide and their possible impact on the employment market. We have also collaborated with The Adecco Group on a timely report called “Paying attention: a report on agency work and wages”, to which our law firms contributed information about minimum wage laws in their countries.

Which countries have state mechanisms to index-link wages to inflation and if so, is that a good strategy? How likely is it to cause a wage-price spiral? We recently conducted a survey of 27 countries to find out and in this podcast, Deborah Ishihara interviews economist and staff writer at Ius Laboris, Susanna Gevorgyan, who explains all about it.