Although the global economic crisis is still roaming around the world, many governments start to issue statements that the crisis is over and recovery is there. Sound nice, but what does this actually mean?
Various analysts all over the world predict total recovery by 2010 and increase of GDP. If it will be true then it is great news for everyone. Salaries will raise, unemployment levels will drastically decrease, the overall quality of life will reach unseen heights. Sounds like utopia doesn’t it? Ok let’s say that the crisis has been beaten and we are on the way to recovery. This really should mean that employers should increase wages, but I do not think that it will happen so soon. It is very easy to cut salaries, but much harder to raise them. That is the simple nature of human beings. Even if the economic situation improves employers tend to be very ‘’careful’’ with raising wages. And why shouldn’t they be? They have suffered through the crisis, had a legitimate opportunity to cut costs be decreasing salaries and now nobody can order them to reset the salaries to previous levels. This means more profit and as the economic situation still seams fragile employees will still be afraid to lose work and obey the employer. So basically we could celebrate the fact of recovery, but we will not receive any actual benefit from it, at least not as soon as we expected.
Granted the unemployment level should improve as companies who have recovered will hire new employees, but then again the salary level will not reach previous levels. None the less this is still good news as more and more people will be able to earn at least a minimum wage to survive and feed their families.
The improvement of the quality of life takes even longer as it is directly connected with salary levels and the overall employment level. Granted the crisis had one positive effect. It decreased the overall costs of food and clothes and some services which previously had reached ridiculous heights.
The general consensus is that yes we can speak about recovery, but only on paper. In real life we will probably experience it only in 2011, of course only if the prognosis does not change and we do not encounter another crisis. Let’s hope for the best scenario.
