The change in work meant higher wage increases. No more.

The change of employment was once an infallible way to obtain a large increase, but the federal data suggest that this is no longer the case.

According to Atlanta Fed’s wage growth tracking, the increase in the median remuneration of employment switches fell to 4.2% in February, a sharp drop of 7.3% at the start of 2023.

The use of stayers has also experienced wages growth slowly, although to a lesser extent, from 5.8% to 4.4% over the same period.

This marks a gross lag of the labor market immediately after Pandemic, when employment switches have constantly exceeded stays in remuneration gains. At their peak in July 2022, employment switches gained up to 2.6% more than those who remained in place.

The end of the great resignation

Labor analysts attribute the slowdown in wages to cooling the great resignation-the post-paid-in-law wave of record jobs and a shortage of labor that has led to wages.

In 2021 alone, around 47 million Americans left their jobs, often guaranteeing a higher salary elsewhere.

“Employment switches experienced a significant salary bonus from the end of 2021 at the beginning of 2023 because employers faced significant labor shortages after the pandemic and had to offer significant salary increases to attract workers far from their previous posts”, Nancy Vanden Houten, Told Business Insider, an economist from the United States of Oxford Economics, told Business Insider.

Now, however, the slowdown in inflation, fewer job offers and reduced competition for workers have weakened the employee negotiation power.

“The labor markets are still quite strong, but far from being as tight as in 2022,” a non -resident principal researcher in Brookings and public policy professor at the University of Georgetown told Bi Holzer.

“The very big gains in 2022 were performing during the big resignation when the labor market was extremely tight, and the workers demanded a higher salary,” he said. But now, “stops have dropped.”

This change makes many reluctant workers to leave their current work.

“Admittedly, in DC, there is the feeling that you would better remain set up at the moment with all layoffs,” Bi Elise Gould, the main economist of the Economic Policy Institute, told Bi Elise Gould.

“There is a certain economic insecurity that would lead to this type of phenomenon where people could remain even more,” she said.

Salary pressure in technology

Technology professionals, in particular, feel the effect of a cooling labor market.

Jim Harrington, a main software engineer at Cart.com who earns more than $ 200,000 a year, told BI only in his job search over 12 months, he saw salaries on the job lists at $ 180,000.

“It is not a bad salary, but it is not the levels that we have been used to seeing in recent years,” he said.

According to level data.

Some professionals have even completely left industry.

Ryan Essenburg, who said he worked for 21 years as director of commercial development At Simultrans, a translation and location service company in Mountain View, California, told BI that he had seen his position eliminated in April 2024.

After what he called a “existential” job search and lower salary offers, I decided to put my research on indefinite socket, “he said, adding:” I now coach tennis and very happy. “”

Others had to make significant salary discounts.

Raymond Traylor, who was put as Director of Pairtree Technology in December 2023, increased from a salary of $ 180,000 to $ 36,000 as an analyst of computer systems at VSES, a SaaS platform, from December 2023 to March 2023, and earns between $ 3,000 and $ 5,000 per month.

“It was a multi-year slowdown, but I hope it is not too long, and I hope that we will not return to a kind of bubble and bubble economy,” he told Bi, adding that it hoped that it is only “strange time between the two”.

What is the next step for wage growth?

While Stayers employment has experienced slightly higher wage increases than employment switches in February, their long -term prospects are not much better.

The workplace consulting firm, Willis Towers Watson, provides that US employees who remain in their roles will see an average salary increase of 3.7% in 2025, against 3.8% in 2024 and 4.6% in 2023, although still greater than the pre-countryic standard of 3%.

Some economists warn that it is not only a temporary drop.

“The quantity of uncertainty that companies are confronted today leads to a reluctance to hire,” said Bi Thomas A. Kochanco, co -director of the Mit Institute for Work and Employment Research.

“If anything, the labor market will weaken in the coming months.”

“I hope we are not for a recession,” he added. “But if this happens, expect the negotiation power of employment hoppers and holders continues to drop.”