In the race against inflation, raises are losing out as Washington workers' wages fall behind rising prices.
Employees' paycheck increases have steadily slowed over the past year with raises hitting a two-year low in October, new pay data shows. Meanwhile inflation in the Seattle area continued to rise by 5.4% over 12 months prior to August, after hitting a record high last year.
Nevertheless, pay increases among Washington workers who stayed at the same job over the past 12 months have been larger than the national average, according to a new report by the ADP Research Institute.
Median wages in the state grew by 6.7%, higher than the national growth rate of 5.7% over 12 months to October. The state ranked among the top 10 for pay increases despite the slowdown.
Across the U.S., it doesn't pay off to switch jobs like it did at the height of the pandemic labor crunch.
The gap in pay hikes for workers who changed jobs and those who stayed at the same place has now narrowed to its closest point since the start of the pandemic, ADP's wage data showed. Workers who changed jobs on average saw a 8.4% raise, 2.7 percentage points more than workers who didn't move. In April 2022, the gap in pay hikes peaked at an 8.8 percentage point difference between workers who go and workers who stay.
"Big post-pandemic pay increases seem to be behind us," said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, adding that no single industry dominated hiring last month.
"In all, October's numbers paint a well-rounded jobs picture. And while the labor market has slowed, it's still enough to support strong consumer spending."
Though workers who change jobs generally logged higher pay hikes, their annual median wages were lower than those who chose to stay at the same place.
The tech sector, after recording massive layoffs over the past year, reported the slowest wage growth this October.
Meanwhile, the high-turnover leisure and hospitality industry reported the highest wage growth.
Per ADP's wage data, which tracks the wages and salaries of almost 10 million employees over a 12-month period, tech workers earn more than double the annual median wages of workers in leisure and hospitality.
In the Seattle area, a decline in tech workers' wages in 2022 led overall average wages to shrink for the first time in at least a decade after recording tremendous wage growth during the first two years of the pandemic.
In terms of employee demographics, younger workers with lower annual median wages recorded higher pay increases than older workers with larger salaries.
While women's paychecks rose faster than men's, a woman's annual median pay is at least $16,000 lower than her male counterpart, according to ADP data. That gap has widened since 2021 even as women's wages are growing faster, according to the data.
