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	Less than 5% of major companies pay living wages by World Benchmarking Alliance   Jan. 2026   Corporate inaction on wages and affordability is worsening the global cost-of-living crisis   Less than 5% of major companies pay a living wage, leaving households worldwide under growing financial strain.   The world is no longer weathering a temporary cost-of-living shock. A crisis that should have passed has instead calcified into a structural failure, as wages flatline and prices of everyday essentials keep climbing.   Real wages remain below pre-pandemic levels in many countries, while food, housing, energy, water, and transport costs continue to outpace household incomes.   Half of all wage workers in low-income countries earn less than USD 201 (PPP) a month — far below what is needed for a decent standard of living — and even median-income households in advanced economies are struggling to meet basic needs.   The world’s largest companies influence both sides of the cost-of-living equation: they determine what people earn and what people pay.   Moreover, the scale of these companies means their decisions directly affect billions of people globally, as essential services become increasingly privatised and corporate supply chains expand.   Momentum across the multilateral system is calling for action on living wages. In 2024, the ILO reached a landmark tripartite agreement formally defining and establishing principles for living wages, a commitment that governments reaffirmed in the 2025 Doha Political Declaration, now moving into implementation.   Leading standard-setters such as GRI and ISSB are signalling stronger emphasis on wage- and benefits-related expectations in future corporate disclosure. In tandem, WBA has launched a Collective Call to Action, now supported by over 65 signatories, inviting companies, governments and investors to embed living wage principles into practice.   Less than 5% of major companies report paying living wages   The overwhelming majority of the 2,000 companies across WBA’s assessments are shirking their responsibility for paying living wages or ensuring affordable essential services, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis at both ends.   Among these 2,000 globally influential companies, which employ over 107 million workers, less than 5% disclose that they guarantee a living wage for their workforce, of which four out of five are headquartered in North America or Europe.   The remaining 95% of companies do not disclose whether their workers earn enough to meet basic needs, leaving millions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, without any clear assurance of sufficient earnings.   Performance is even weaker in supply chains: less than 3% of companies support suppliers in paying living wages, despite influencing the incomes of more than half a billion workers through their supply chains globally.   Corporate action on affordability of basic services remains deficient   Corporate performance on affordability is also strikingly poor. Among the 300 companies affecting utilities, housing and transport, 76% score zero on every affordability indicator, from basic reporting to target-setting and implementation.   This means that the companies people rely on for essential services neither disclose whether their services are affordable nor report any action to ease rising costs for households. The digital sector fares no better: only less than 8% of 200 digital companies have programmes that expand access to technology for vulnerable groups.   Affordability is not treated as material by most companies. There a few promising practices - in the utilities sector, American Water Works, Iberdrola and United Utilities have embedded affordability measures into business planning and reporting, and are taking steps to support vulnerable households and reduce bill volatility.   Yet only four utility companies disclose forward-looking affordability targets, leaving the majority of 3.6 billion energy customers and 800 million water customers with providers that show no definitive plans to improve affordability.   Many top performers in the digital sector are headquartered in lower-income countries such as Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa, offering opportunities to scale low-cost models and break traditional wealth patterns. Nonetheless, affordability continues to be one of the main barriers to digital inclusion globally.   The results are clear: companies still have a considerable distance to go to mitigate their worldwide impact on wages and affordability, while inequality and cost-of-living pressures continue to mount.   Companies can play a pivotal role in tackling the cost-of-living crisis by considering living wages and affordability as core responsibilities. Next to ensuring living wages for workers across their operations and supply chains, it is increasingly important that companies conduct affordability risk assessments, integrate affordability as a material sustainability topic and disclose relevant metrics.   At the same time, governments can help bridge the gap between minimum wages and living wages through policies. By integrating wage standards into reporting requirements, policymakers can accelerate corporate transparency and action.   Simultaneously, investors and other financial actors have can engage with companies to promote living wages and affordability as fundamental human rights and overcome long-term systemic issues.   Clear accountability frameworks are essential. Defining responsibilities for companies, governments, and investors is fundamental to ensure that affordability doesn’t slip through the cracks and land up ‘no one’s problem’.   Creating clarity on everyone's responsibility sets the conditions for collective action that closes gaps in affordability and ensures that no one’s basic needs are overlooked.   http://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/corporate-inaction-wages-and-affordability-worsening-global-cost-living-crisis http://www.srpoverty.org/2025/04/04/joint-statement-all-states-must-prioritise-adoption-of-a-living-wage-ahead-of-the-second-world-summit-for-social-development/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/lessons-from-mexicos-wage-policy-that-lifted-millions-out-of-poverty/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/01/what-is-a-living-wage-and-why-is-it-a-human-rights-issue/ http://www.ituc-csi.org/wages http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2025/02/achieving-global-social-justice/
	Humanity’s future requires the urgent overhaul of the world’s existing accounting systems by UN News, OHCHR, news agencies   Jan. 2026   Humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s existing accounting systems, says UN chief. (Guardian news, agencies)   The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has warned. Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.   “We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.”   For decades, politicians and policymakers have prioritised growth – as measured by GDP – as the overarching economic goal. But critics argue that endless, indiscriminate growth on a planet with finite resources is driving not only the climate and nature crisis but increasing inequality.   Guterres said: “Moving beyond gross domestic product is about measuring the things that really matter to people and their communities. GDP tells us the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. Our world is not a gigantic corporation. Financial decisions should be based on more than a snapshot of profit and loss.”   In January, the UN held a conference in Geneva titled Beyond GDP attended by senior economists from around the world – including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, leading Indian economist Kaushik Basu and equity expert Nora Lustig. They are part of a group set up by Guterres that has been tasked with devising a new dashboard of measures of economic success that takes “human wellbeing, sustainability and equity” into account.   A report published by the group late last year argued that, as the world wrestled with repeated global shocks over the past two decades, the need for an economic transformation had become increasingly urgent – from the financial crash of 2008 to the Covid-19 pandemic.   It said those events were exacerbated by the “triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution” and, in addition, warned that rapid technological change was upending labour markets and exacerbating growing inequality.   Prof Basu, who co-chairs the UN group alongside Lustig, said: “Nations are so locked into the game of beating other nations in terms of the GDP metric, that the wellbeing of ordinary citizens and sustainability are getting ignored.   “If all the new income accrues to a few individuals, and the GDP grows, all citizens are expected to cheer. This is feeding hyper-nationalism, inequality and polarisation.”   Prof Lustig said GDP had never been “designed to measure human progress, yet it remains the dominant benchmark of success.”   “Economic growth can coexist with poverty, exclusion, violence, and serious violations of human rights – outcomes that remain largely invisible in conventional economic accounts … The group’s aim is not to replace GDP but to complement it, helping governments and the public assess whether development is truly improving human wellbeing, advancing equity, and safeguarding sustainability now and for future generations.”   The UN initiative follows a report published last week that said current economic models are fundamentally flawed because they failed to account of the impact of climate shocks such as extreme weather disasters and tipping points, and could crash the global economy. These concerns come amid a growing debate in academia, civil society and policy circles about how to create economic structures that are compatible with greater equality and sustainability.   http://www.un.org/beyondgdp http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/10/more-gdp-measuring-what-really-matters-people-and-rights http://www.thebeyondlab.org/article/event-summary-unctad16-parallel-event-beyond-gdp http://www.un.org/en/beyondGDP/documents   Jan. 2026   Economic Growth at any cost fails us All, by Olivier De Schutter - UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. (Time Magazine)   Last week, powerful politicians and business leaders gathered in Davos, promising to “unlock new sources of growth” to solve the world’s many crises. Poverty, climate breakdown, and political instability—all, we were told, can be fixed if only we grow our economies a little faster.   It is a familiar refrain that we have seen in countless other global gatherings—from the G7 to the G20 and IMF-World bank meetings in Washington D.C., But my six years of experience as the United Nations’ expert on poverty have taught me at least one thing: it is profoundly misguided. Economic growth is no magic bullet. And it certainly won’t solve global poverty.   Historically, the global economy everyone is so desperate to grow, has funneled vast wealth into the hands of a few, trapped millions in insecure and poorly-paid work to boost corporate profits, relied on the plundering of natural resources and the exploitation of cheap labour in the Global South and has caused irreparable damage to the planet.   This is not a system that has gone slightly off course. It is one that is fundamentally unfit for purpose.   At Davos, economic growth was not defended cautiously; it was celebrated. U.S. President Donald Trump boasted of growth “no country has ever seen before." And Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, described the 3.3% global growth forecast as “beautiful but not enough. “   The response from the top, to any claims that growth may be causing more harm than good,, is to reach for “green growth”—the idea that, when done right, economic growth can be accompanied by a reduction in its ecological footprint.   China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng’s Davos speech was littered with references to “global green and low-carbon development”, “green production capacity”, “green finance”, and a “green and prosperous future”.   Yet even under the best conditions, a growing body of evidence shows that the absolute decoupling of gross domestic product (GDP) from environmental degradation—growing the economy while simultaneously reducing resource use, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution—is impossible. Technological advances simply cannot compensate for an economic model built on ever-expanding production and consumption.   As I told the UN Human Rights Council when presenting my 2024 report on Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, the global economy, in its current form, will only ever serve a tiny minority. And it will always do so at the expense of the planet and the vast majority of people who live on it.   Given the evidence at hand, it beggars belief that world leaders continue to shout from the mountaintops of Davos that we need yet more growth. One is left to wonder whether they—as members of the economic elite—stand to benefit personally, or if they have simply run out of imagination.   Outside the conference halls, however, imagination is very much alive. This week’s first annual Reclaim the Economy Week reflects a growing global demand for fresh thinking, with individuals and collectives uniting to demand an economy that puts people and planet first.   And a new development model is emerging on the back of my report to the UN—one that breaks from the outdated formula of prioritizing economic growth first and attempting to redistribute through taxes and transfers later.   This alternative approach to global poverty eradication is being built by a growing alliance of UN agencies, governments, civil society organisations, academics, trade unions, and others. Now, this approach is being translated into a Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, which I will present to the UN later this year.   The aim of the roadmap is not abstract theory, but practical change: a set of concrete policy options for governments in both the global north and south that shift economies away from profit maximization and towards the fulfilment of human rights.   This shift requires better rewarding work according to its social and ecological value—raising wages for essential workers, while placing limits on pay in destructive industries such as fossil fuels or tobacco. And we can benefit from job-guarantee programs whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work.   Our approach should also include debt cancellation and restructuring, because it is indefensible that 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health or education.   The policies detailed in our roadmap will also guide governments towards deeper structural change: reclaiming economic decision-making, bringing democratic control to the financial system through the taxation of extreme wealth and investment in care and public services; restoring and protecting the commons; supporting just transitions to renewable energy and sustainable food systems; and holding corporations accountable for environmental destruction, labour abuses, and human rights violations.   These are the bold—but achievable—measures that could positively shape the next generation of efforts to end poverty, including the globally agreed development goals that will succeed the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. Unfortunately, these pragmatic policies will remain out of reach as long as we cling to the belief that economic growth equals human progress.   After nearly a century of being told that the most important metric in all of our lives is how fast the economy grows, this may sound radical. But it is far less reckless than continuing to defend an economic system whose rules are written by and for billionaires and multinational corporations—and then acting surprised when it fails everyone else.   http://www.srpoverty.org/2026/01/27/time-opinion-economic-growth-at-any-cost-fails-us-all/ http://www.neep-poverty.org/roadmap-for-eradicating-poverty-beyond-growth/ http://www.neep-poverty.org/news/ http://www.srpoverty.org/category/reports/ Visit the related web page
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