So on drudging through the stats department of the Chilean Central Bank website this morning…y’know….just like any normal and well-adjusted person on a Monday morning…it suddenly occurred to this humble scribe that Chile must be some sort of laboral Nirvana, a Panacea of hope set aside from the normal abusive labour practices and gouging companies only interested in their bottom lines more common in this continent.
Why so? Well take a look at this chart that compares country inflation (the consumer type) and the indexed average salaries paid to the workforce. The only adjustment made is mathematical (and easy), as one set of figures is indexed at 100 to 2006 and the other to 2008, so a quick adjustment brings them both to the same starting point.
What we see is that salaries have increased over this period at a pretty regular rate, but the main benefit came in 2009 onwards when, thanks to that deflationary impulse from abroad, inflation levels dropped and things got cheaper (or didn’t get any more expensive at least), while salaries apparently kept on rising. The result? More buying power in the hands of the average Joe Chileno and the world is a beautiful place.
But then I got to thinking why that should be, especially cos of this:
Because Chile didn’t escape from the effects of the Lehman/Subprime plunge, as the unemployment numbers clearly show. So hey wow!! Chile must be a special place right? It’s the wonderful exception where unemployment rises sharply but bosses are still willing to pay extra to the people that are still employed.
Or maybe…just perhapsy…the Chile CenBank is statistically full of shit. YOU BE THE JUDGE!