Amara Mokwe

This is a Fed that is the memory of the pandemic inflation and the transitory misstep is very fresh in their minds.

They have not been able to get inflation back down to their two percent target for five years now.

And so I think you're seeing more and more Fed officials saying we're not going to have tolerance for inflation that looks like it is persisting, regardless of what like the traditional economic theories would say.

Hourly workers are typically younger, less experienced, new graduates, the same people who are having a tough time finding a job right now.

These are entry-level professionals.

They are contractors, freelance workers, interns.

They are the ones that saw their posted wage go down.

Economist Sneha Puri with Indeed Hiring Lab wrote the report.

These people are finding it harder to find a job, which makes it easier to not increase their post-paid wage at the same rate.

That's a pretty big 180 from the post-pandemic boom in 2022.

Back then, hourly wage increases actually outpaced the salaried folks.

When things opened up, employers had to scramble a bit more to try to hire those workers and they had to do more to attract and retain them.

Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says those jobs are more volatile.

If the economy is strong, so are those wages.

Now the economy is weakened somewhat.

They don't have that kind of leverage.

Unemployment is rising.

And therefore, when employers see more sideline workers, they don't have to work as hard to get the ones they want.

In the past year, salaried wages have stagnated too, but not as dramatically.

Eric Hurst is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.