* Global real wage growth in 2009 only 1.6 pct

* Signs of higher growth in 2010

GENEVA, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Wage growth is recovering but has not regained pre-crisis levels, meaning many countries still face the threat of deflation from inadequate demand, the International Labour Organization said on Wednesday.

A report by the United Nations body that monitors work-related issues found wages had fallen in the last few years in rich economies, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but continued to grow at slower rates in Asia and Latin America.

“The recession has not only been dramatic for the millions who lost their jobs but has also affected those who remained in employment by severely reducing their purchasing power and their general well-being,” ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in a statement on the report.

A study of trends in 115 economies covering 94 percent of the world’s 1.4 billion wage earners showed wages grew in real terms by 1.6 percent in 2009 -- the last year for which full data are available -- after 1.5 percent in 2008 when it halved from 2.8 percent in 2007.

The figures are skewed by imperfect Chinese official data, which only cover workers in state-run urban enterprises, who according to Chinese surveys have enjoyed wage growth at twice the level of those in the private sector.

Excluding China -- the world’s biggest number of wage earners -- real wages grew by 0.7 percent in 2009 after 0.8 percent in 2008 and 2.2 percent in 2007.

ILO officials said that initial indications from G20 economies suggest wages continued to recover in 2010, rising 2.0 percent this year in a group of these countries after median growth of 1.3 percent in 2008 and 2009, said Patrick Belser, one of the authors of the report.

“We’re not yet back to the levels before the crisis but the trend is probably upwards,” he told a news conference.

Besides pointing to a sharp slowdown in wage growth after the crisis, the report shows that wage growth in many countries before the crisis was only moderate, and far outstripped by productivity gains, while large numbers of people in employment were nevertheless living in poverty.

These suppressed wage levels eroded consumption and aggregate demand, said Manuela Tomei, the report’s lead author.

“These trends that have preceded the outbreak of the crisis... have been among the factors that triggered the financial crisis,” she said.

Continuing moderate wage growth in advanced economies exposes them to a risk of deflation, while fuel and food price inflation in developing countries is also eroding purchasing power there despite stronger wage growth, she said.

The fact that productivity gains have exceeded wage growth reflects two main trends. In some countries such as Germany and China, companies coped with inadequate demand by switching production into exports, while in others such as the United States a rise in household debt compensated for low purchasing power, ILO officials said. (For full report go to link.reuters.com/hyv99q ) (Reporting by Jonathan Lynn; editing by Ralph Boulton)