Employers Are Courting Less-Educated Workers — Finally — but They Aren't Offering Pay Increases

The latest Federal Reserve Bank of New York Survey of Consumer Expectations observed that employees who lack a bachelor's degree are switching jobs at the highest rate since the poll began in 2014. However, the Washington Post reports, their salaries have declined slightly in the past year. It would logically follow that with less-educated workers more in demand, employers would have to raise wages to poach outsiders and retain employees in the face of competing offers. This is happening with employees who have bachelor's or advanced degrees, and the unemployment rate for workers 25 and older with at least a bachelor's degree was 2.1 percent in August. Intensifying competition has caused the average full-time salary for college-educated workers to climb about $5,800 over the past year. Concurrently, the comparable salary for less-educated workers in the poll has slipped by about $4,700. Respondents with a bachelor's degree or higher said it would take an average annual salary of about $81,900 to prompt them to switch jobs, up from about $76,600 a year earlier. Meanwhile, seasoned workers with less than a bachelor's degree said they would leave their job for about $47,300 on average, which is virtually unchanged from a year earlier. "Less-educated workers might be finally moving to firms with higher productivity and with better opportunities for themselves," suggests New York Fed analyst Gizem Kosar.