US salaries are falling. Employers say compensation is just 'resetting' | Hacker News Reader

US salaries are falling. Employers say compensation is just 'resetting'

bbc.com

27 pointspg_123426 comments

US wages have been increasing faster than inflation for the last 11 months:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...

Still lots of help wanted signs in windows so anecdotally it still seems relatively easy to get a bump from $12/hr to $15/hr working retail. But the types of jobs posted on ziprecruiter.com aren't increasing like they were in the past.

Why do we keep talking about the kind of jobs that put signs in the window. Are those good jobs?

No, but they're a substantial fraction of all jobs. They are also important because if you can't get one of those jobs the alternative is likely unemployment.

It is basically an easy anecdote one can see day to day about whether there are openings in the local job market.

My pet theory is that outside of the recent tech salary bubble decade, anyone with a "normal" salary in the US can't really get ahead without at least investing in market index funds/ETFs. Otherwise, all an employee gets is time-for-money pay (which is constantly under pressure as a business cost) with little if any upside from high industry profits. Either that or play the startup equity lottery.

If employees equally owned the businesses they work for, falling salaries wouldnt be as tragic a event as the employees would be compensated still by the company being worth more.

Employee ownership is moral imperative. Worker owned co-ops should be de rigueur, not a rarity. It's absurd that companies like Amazon force people to work for peanuts and pee in bottles and yet reap enormous profits that aren't shared with those who made them.

> The tightening labour market has left US workers with fewer options than just years earlier.

I thought a tight labor market was where demand for labor was higher than supply whereas a slack labor market had supply of labor than demand. This sounds like a slackening of the labor market, not a tightening.

GDP is up 32% over the past 5 years[0]. Wages are up 25% over the same time period. Seems like we could use a little bit more compensation increases.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hYJD

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1hYK4

GDP growth is utterly broken from increased government spending. It's not sustainable.

Even if we accept that as true, it means we've allowed businesses to collect that overspending while not passing it on to workers. How convenient for them.

That's how high (or "realistic") interest rates feels like. Another way to think about it is that the low interest rate environment was a sort of bonus, not a base pay raise - for those who were correctly positioned to take advantage of it.

Goodbye? The federal funds rate is at a 23 year high.

And the Fed lowers interest rates when unemployment rises.

That's what I was trying to say, but did so in a confusing way. Fixed, thank you.

Wasn't there a labor shortage?

Still is.

But their corporate profits keep going up....

If you want to work for a company where your salary is 100% tied to yearly profit, by my guest. But even a 2 second critical thinking exercise will demonstrate why that is a bad idea.

One of my friend literally work in a worker co-op for consultants. He has a base salary a bit lower than mine, but double it each year (2024 might be different though)

As is inflation...

Rate of inflation is going down, not up. 3.4% in 2023 vs 6.5 % in 2022 (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl...). The target inflation rate is between 2-3%, so 2023 was pretty close to the target rate.

Meanwhile the price on literally everything is going up. Okay.

Well, yes, but more slowly than in 2022. No one said inflation was zero, only that it's back to a more manageable level.

Greed and smaller packaging my friend. All they needed was an excuse.

Positive inflation will do that.

those are also resetting. Profits are in decline, resetting. Need a new batch of workers, reset the old ones right away. Resetting benefits. Reset workers back to the office. Reset PTO policy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com