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The global crisis has had significant negative repercussions for labour markets in many parts of the world, and recovery is proving uncertain and elusive. At the global level, average wages have grown but at lower rates than before the crisis. However this Global Wage Report 2012/13 shows that the impact of the crisis on wages was far from uniform. The report presents data on trends in wages around the world and compares them with trends in labour productivity, analyzing their complex effects on the global economy with a view to shedding some light on the current debates over distribution, competitiveness and labour costs. When wages rise in line with productivity increases they are both sustainable and create a stimulus for further economic growth by increasing households’ purchasing power. However for a decade or more before the crisis, the link between wages and labour productivity was broken in many countries and this contributed to the creation of global economic imbalances. The report shows that since the 1980s a majority of countries have experienced a downward trend in the “labour income share”, which means that a lower share of national income has gone into labour compensation and a higher share into capital incomes. This has happened most frequently where wages have stagnated but also in some countries where real wages have grown strongly. On a social and political level this trend risks creating perceptions that workers and their families are not receiving their fair share of the wealth they create. On an economic level, it could endanger the pace and sustainability of future economic growth by constraining wage-based household consumption. This is particularly true where the era of debt-based consumption has now led to an extended period in which households must pay off earlier debts.