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Dollar, LD file photo
For employees of fast food restaurants in Manhattan to demand a salary of 20 dollars, an unthinkable demand before the pandemic that has become something normal that companies have notably increased their wages, a trend that has not, however, reduced inequalities.
The shortage of labor due to covid-19 infections, the care of minors and the exhaustion of underpaid employees determined not to return to their jobs under the same conditions as before the health crisis, has pressured companies to guarantee an improved minimum wage with benefits such as health insurance and premiums.
“There has been an awareness on the part of the country’s large employers of the need to relevel wagesif they want to attract a reliable workforce to help them navigate this period of uncertainty,” he stressed. Gregory Daco, chief economist at Ernst & Young Parthenon.
“Supporting and retaining the best collaborators in the world allows us to offer the best products and the most innovative services to our customers,” said the company. Apple told AFP after announcing a $22 hourly minimum wage.
The tech giant claims to be the industry leader in minimum hourly pay and boasts of having expanded “a robust array of fringe benefits” to its employees. for your employees. In addition, by increasing wages, the company can, like Amazon, try to discourage union ambitions.
The hourly wage of 22 dollars represents a 45% increase compared to its lowest level of 2018, he specified the group.
Loyalty to workers
In the summer of 2021, in the face of labor shortages, several companies, including Amazon, Target or Chipotle, had exceeded the threshold of 15 dollars This is more than double the federal minimum wage ($7.25), which hasn’t changed since 2009. too a minimum remuneration of 22 dollars that will go up to 25 dollars from here to 2025.
In the United States, the highest wage increases went to less well-off employees who did not hesitate to demonstrate for a raise.
All Wage levels have risen but it is the lower ranks that have improved enough to offset inflation, according to Mahir Rasheed, an economist at Oxford economics.
– Illusion; n optics –
But if these increases seem significant, especially in hotels and restaurants, they are still below the average salary during the year.
“The increases seem enormous, since some salaries exceeded 7 $10 to $10, $10 to $12, $12 to $15 and even $15 to $20,” says Gregory Daco.
However, “$15 per hour, it’s $30,000 per year, that is to say, much less than the 50,000 to 60,000 dollars of the average salary,” he explained. the expert.
Furthermore, this apparent comeback could happen only once.
It is “unlikely” Expect the gains to continue at that rate, even if we see further gains here. And there, companies want to remain attractive, estimates Mahir Rasheed.
Those profits are going to shrink as workers re-enter the market, Rasheed explains.
As employers’ need for labor slows, “workers’ bargaining power is going to erode,” notes Gregory Daco.
“Unfortunately I don’t expect These increases need to be sustained in the long run because we haven’t seen an increase in the federal minimum wage,” acknowledges Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank of United States.
In a study published last month, Gould noted that the average salary had increased by 4.4% in the first year of the pandemic in the United States but fell in the first year of the pandemic. It was up 1.7% in the second year.
“Even with faster growth in the wages of the lowest-paid workers over the past year, Wage levels remain highly unequal in the American labor market,” with disparities based on gender and race.