BIDENOMICS IS WORKING: US salaries are falling. Employers say compensation is just ‘resetting.’

The tightening labour market has left US workers with fewer options than just years earlier. Beginning 2020, employers boosted salaries to new heights to attract talent to a deluge of open roles. But amid an uncertain economy, employers have pulled back from new hires and cut jobs.

“There is now less competition to hire workers – and therefore less need to boost wages,” says Nick Bunker, US-based director of North American Economic Research at Indeed. “Job postings have dropped quite a bit, while the supply of workers has grown.”

Previously: Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”