The average reservation wage of U.S. jobs seekers — the lowest annual pay workers would accept for a new job — climbed to a record high of $78,645 in July, up from $72,873 at the same time last year, according to the survey.
Combined with:
Yet the average full-time wage offer received in the past four months was $69,475, itself a marked increase from $60,764 last July.
So that's a ~13.5% increase in full-time wage offers vs a ~7.5% increase in ask. This seems like a non-story then, yes? Inflation has pushed wages higher which has pushed expectations higher. However, the offer increase is higher than the ask increase so... Am I missing something here?
I agree it’s a non story. I mean, take out the numbers and the headline is pretty much “employees want more money and employers don’t want to give it”.
But that's my point, employers are giving it (kinda, I'll circle-back to this). The full-time offer has gone up $9k in the last 12 months. Contrasted with the ask that has only gone up $6k in that same time-frame.
Now, is $70k a livable wage? Hard to say without a more specific location. In bumfuck Alabama, probably. In LA, hell no.
Also note, this is the amount minimum for someone willing to leave their current job. So that eliminates recently graduated or low skill non college workers from this equation.
Unsurprising. $78k/yr comes out to $2194/mo take home pay per Smartasset's calculator. Average rent is well over $1k/mo with no signs of going down any time soon. Landlords frequently demand potential renters have an income of 3x the rent. Gotta live somewhere.
Apparently I'm stupid but I'm too tired to fix it rn so I will just leave my shame up here for all to see. My point is being alive is expensive and bad math or no I'm still not surprised to see this.
Edit again because I'm also too stupid to do a strikethrough correctly even with a formatting bar right there. FML and F this phone too, I'm going to bed
They may have taken the "semi-monthly take home pay" to be monthly instead, and the calculator counts after taxes.
So it's twice what they think it is, and four times what average rent is. You can change it to monthly, and it's more like $4,500 depending on where you live.
The calculator defaults to semi-monthly and I think the original commenter didn't change it. Also, it defaults to your current location so the take-home will be different for everyone running the calculator (because taxes). $78k is $6500 a month BEFORE TAXES.
But then that stat is meaningless. I want a million dollars. Who cares? But if employees are moving to new companies for 78k, then I would report “employees want 78k for a new job”. It wouldn’t makes sense to report that “employers don’t want to pay 78k” because they never want to pay anything.
This is worded to make labor seem unreasonable on purpose.
What article are you reading? I'm not seeing anything about "employers refuse to pay 78k", only that offers are less than that (and still significantly more than what they were this time last year). The article seems to put more stock in the marked difference in demands and offers between women and men.
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