Wage Insurance

Wage insurance is a form of proposed insurance that would provide workers with compensation if they are forced to move to a job with a lower salary. The idea is usually proposed as a response to outsourcing and the effects of globalization, although it could equally be proposed as a response to job displacement due to increasingly productive technology (e.g. factories, or computers). Economic consensus generally holds that in both cases—the integration of the global economy through free trade, on one hand, and greater technological efficiencies, on the other—the changes will have a net benefit across the world. However, economic theory also indicates that, while people over the aggregate will be better off, many individuals will not be able to keep their current job at their current wages. Those individuals may be able to retrain and move to more highly paid wages, and the reduced cost of goods (which is likely to result from either case under consideration) may offset at least some of the wage loss. These compensating effects are likely to take several years to come about, however, and some people might never be fully compensated by normal market mechanisms. Wage insurance would offer compensation in these situations.