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Some jobs don't pay as much as they used to.
According to ZipRecruiter data, the wages employers are offering new hires in several blue-collar sectors of the labor market are declining this year compared to 2023, with retail wages seeing the biggest decline of 55.9%, followed by agriculture (-24.5%), manufacturing (-17.3%) and transportation (-13.9%).
Construction at Toll Brothers Borello Ranch Estates residential community in Morgan Hill, Calif., Tuesday, June 4, 2024. Salaries offered to entry-level employees in several blue-collar industries, including construction, have, on average, fallen over the past decade. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
“Average posted salaries have increased overall and across most job categories since last year,” ZipRecruiter chief economist Julia Pollack told FOX Business. “But trends have varied across different sectors of the economy, with white-collar sectors seeing faster growth and blue-collar sectors seeing slower growth.”
Pollack said this is partly due to economic normalization and mean reversion after the pandemic, but also due to a sharp hiring slowdown in the private sector outside of health care.
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“Several other indicators suggest the competition for talent has eased,” the economists said. “For example, the gap in wage growth between job-changers and job-stayers reached 2.8 percentage points in August 2022, but has since fallen to just 0.5 percentage points (according to the Atlanta Fed's wage growth tracker).”
The data shows that employers are offering lower salaries in 2024 than they did last year for some jobs, particularly blue-collar roles. But some recruiters also see a decline in hiring for white-collar roles, even as salaries across the profession are rising. (Photo: Joe Raedl/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Pollack noted that ZipRecruiter's most recent new hire survey found that new hires are not only seeing smaller raises, but also fewer signing on bonuses, attractive counter offers and inquiries from recruiters.
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Darin Carr, Car Talent Acquisitionsays his company has noticed the trend.
“We've seen thousands of job ads with declining job openings and wages in recent weeks and months,” Carr told Fox Business, noting that job openings and wages are declining across both white-collar and blue-collar roles and at companies of all sizes.
Former Home Depot CEO and Chairman Bob Nardelli spoke about the U.S. employment data and argued that the job market is “tight.”
Carr said he's also noticed a trend of employers only hiring in cities and regions where a falling cost of living correlates with falling income, and noted there has been a move in recent years to eliminate higher-paying positions and replace them with cheaper 1099 contractors.
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He said in many cases, employers will again have the upper hand.
“A lot of people are scared, so people are less attached to their jobs than they were even six months ago,” Carr said in his assessment of the situation. “They need jobs, or better jobs, to pay their mounting bills, but they don't have the negotiating power they did not have some time ago.”
