Bloomberg — One profession seeing a significant increase in its wages is recruiting, which has 11 million unfilled jobs in the US labor market.
Revelio Labs has analyzed job advertisements in big metropolitan areas to determine if salaries were adjusted for inflation. The results show that recruiters received 14% more salary than last year. Others who saw significant increases in their real salaries were cleaners and restaurant managers, as well as web developers.
These data provide insight on how wage growth across over 100 job types compares to the highest inflation rates in many decades. The bottom line is that hourly earnings nationwide are decreasing when adjusted for inflation. However, the rises seen in job switching and in new employees in high-demand industries outpace recent consumer price increases.
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“The need for recruiters is indicative of the fact there’s such high demand for these other jobs,” said Traci Fiatte, head of professional and commercial staffing at Randstad USA.
Sectors that experienced large job loss at the start of the Covid-19 epidemic saw some of the largest wage increases. Employers were left with no choice but to hire workers from other sectors.
White collar and managerial occupations make up a large portion of the 15 most popular jobs. Web developers and consultants took on new positions during the rise in work-from-home. This led to strong wage growth. The same goes for educators.
The data shows that some workers who are less well-paid get smaller raises. Inflation-adjusted wages have seen a 1% increase in the pay of distribution specialists (which includes warehouse workers) while cashier salaries are only barely keeping pace with inflation.
Revelio Labs, which collects and analyzes workforce data, adjusted salaries in job postings across the nation’s largest metro areas by the Labor Department’s corresponding local consumer price index. It was either the October or September CPI that was used, depending on which location. This is because many cities have the same data every month. The 150 occupations were combined to create job types that were weighted according to their presence in the city.
The higher wages advertised in job advertisements can encourage turnover by allowing skilled workers to leave for more lucrative jobs. These data highlighted the stark contrast between existing and new workers in a period of high inflation.
“Companies aren’t raising the wages of their incumbent and tenured staff to the same degree,” said Raleen Gagnon, vice president of global market intelligence at ManpowerGroup Inc. “They leave the rest of their organization vulnerable to someone else coming in and poaching their talent.”
Additional benefits are available to high-demand sector new hires. Julia Pollak (chief economist, ZipRecruiter Inc.) stated that the share of job opportunities offering signing bonuses, retirement plans and flexible work schedules has increased over time.
Economists predict that the labor shortage will continue into 2022. That will ultimately keep pressure on companies to keep raising pay to fill positions — and to retain their existing workers.
There are many companies that have the potential to increase wages. The United States’ financial sector has seen its largest margins in the last quarter since 1950.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke at a press conference on December 15. He stated that his fellow economists are closely monitoring whether real-wage increases outpace productivity gains. This would lead to inflation. So far wages aren’t a major factor in the current surge in consumer prices, he added.
“Because of how hot the job market is, workers have more negotiating power heading into 2022,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.
