This issue of the International Journal of Labour Research is wholly dedicated to the question of the minimum wage, a matter that has gained in importance and profile in recent years. No doubt, the main reasons behind this rise in prominence relate to the stagnation of wages in several parts of the world, a generalized increase in earnings inequality as well as the rise in social unrest across the globe.
In many countries in the economic North where minimum wages have generally been somewhat secondary to collective bargaining for unions, the drop in union coverage and the incapacity of maintaining full employment have translated in the creation of growing pockets of low-paid workers (whether paid at minimum or quasi minimum wages), particularly in nontradable private services.
In the South, the maintenance of large informal sectors and the concentration of the export sector in often low-paid labour-intensive supply chains where a brutal global competition exists have acted as an effective brake on the improvement in wage levels and have kept the question of the minimum wage at centre stage.
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