Jobs that pay $20 per hour : The Great Resignation could be over, but employees still seek an increase.
Since April last year, the public has been looking for jobs that pay 20 dollars per hour, more than they’ve looked for jobs paying $15 an hour, According to a new analysis by Indeed’s Hiring Lab. This differs from 2019 and 2020, where job listings on Indeed’s platform that included “$15” were more popular than those that had “$20.”
Over the past year, search results for jobs offering 20-per-hour salaries have risen over 35% while searches for $15-per-hour wages have decreased by over 57%, the data of Indeed illustrates. The percentage of investigations conducted to find a job with a minimum salary of $25 per hour pay has also increased.
In her report, Indeed economist Ann Elizabeth Konkel attributed the change to two causes: wage increases for hourly workers, which came at 5.9 percent in the month ending on March 31, and rising prices for necessities like food and fuel.
“Once workers realize it’s possible to earn more money, their expectations of them may change and create an attraction factor when they search for more dollars,” Konkel wrote. However, she said, inflation has made nearly everything more costly, prompting people to seek higher wages.
The hourly workers aren’t the only ones looking for big paydays. The data from a survey released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the median reservations wage — the most reasonable salary a job seeker will accept in exchange for starting a new job increased to $72,873 in July from $68,954 one year ago.
Hourly workers can get an increase.
The minimum wage in the U.S. is currently $7.25 for an hour (and has been stuck at that level since 2009). However, a small percentage of workers make that much. Based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 1.4 percent of all hourly workers made the minimum wage in the federal government or less in 2021. The cost of living has been rising so fast and varies significantly across the United States that even those who earn substantially over $7.25 an hour struggle.
A large majority of states and several towns and cities have adopted minimum wage levels that exceed $7.25. A study by the National Employment Law Project found that 44 counties and towns will have minimum wage levels which exceed $15 an hour for, at the very least, a portion of workers until the end of 2022.
Certain cities and states have minimum wage regulations which are linked to inflation. As per Bloomberg Law, this means that over a dozen states could receive automatic increases by 2023.
This is not even mentioning the recent private sector rises, a lot of which occurred in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak when the market for labor shifted toward workers. Large employers such as Amazon, Target, Costco, and Hobby Lobby have been raising their minimum wage to $15/hour or more — even in states where the minimum wage is lower, to draw employees and keep them competitive.
New laws could make wages even higher this week: The California State Senate passed a bill that will allow the new council to determine to pay for fast food workers that could reach $22 an hour the in the coming year. The governor of California has yet to take the bill to law, and it’s not known if he’s planning to sign it.
