America's dissatisfied workforce
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Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Workers have never been more dissatisfied with their pay or their ability to get ahead. But the likelihood of moving to a new employer is at multiyear lows.
- Those are the bleak findings from a New York Federal Reserve Bank survey, which showed plummeting job satisfaction alongside diminishing odds that workers will be able to make a change.
Why it matters: For most workers, switching jobs is the fastest route to a raise or a promotion. But with hiring at historically low levels, that path has all but disappeared.
- The results have implications for consumer spending and productivity. A stuck, underpaid workforce might be less likely to spend freely and more likely to be less engaged.
By the numbers: The share of workers who said they were satisfied with wage compensation fell 3.3 percentage points, to 52.3% in March, the smallest share in the survey's 12-year history.
- The New York Fed surveys consumers' labor market expectations every four months.
- A related indicator, which measures workers' satisfaction with promotion opportunities, fell by a similar amount to the lowest share on record.
- The only satisfaction gauge above record lows: non-wage benefits.
The intrigue: Record dissatisfaction is not accompanied by plans to exit, at least not in the near term.
- On average, workers see decreasing odds that they will have a new employer in the next four months: The likelihood of such a move dropped to 9.7%, the lowest since March 2021. (Coincidentally, that was when wage satisfaction was at its peak in this survey.)
The other side: Workers assigned slightly smaller odds that they would be fired in the next four months — about 3.4%, down two ticks from February.
- Workers are still bidding up pay expectations. The average reservation wage — the lowest wage respondents would be willing to accept for a new job — hit a survey high in March, an increase driven by male workers and respondents with a college degree.
