Three-quarters (74 per cent) of U.S. employers say they plan to give employees raises in 2024, while 18 per cent are undecided and eight per cent say they won’t offer pay increases, according to a new survey by ResumeBuilder.com.
However, the survey, which polled 600 employers, found among respondents planning to give out raises, just 14 per cent said they plan to issue raises to all employees, with half of these employers noting 50 per cent of employees or less will actually receive a raise. More than half of all respondents said they anticipate their company having layoffs this year.
Read: Canadian employers projecting smaller compensation increases in 2024: survey
Notably, 79 per cent of respondents that are planning to give raises said they plan to make those pay increases bigger than in recent years. A majority of respondents said they’ll give performance-based raises (82 per cent), cost-of-living adjustments (69 per cent) and promotional-based raises (55 per cent). Among those offering cost-of-living adjustments, nearly half said the adjustments will be three per cent or less (45 per cent). Slightly more than a quarter said they’ll provide a four per cent (28 per cent) and five per cent or more (27 per cent) increase.
When asked which groups of employees, if any, they believe are most important to give raises to, roughly a fifth of respondents cited executive-level (17 per cent) and senior-level (18 per cent) employees.
“It’s not a good business move for business leaders to focus on executive level compensation over other groups of employees,” said Stacie Haller, ResumeBuilder.com’s chief career advisor, in a press release. “Last year, chief executive officers were, on average, paid 273-times as much as their employees and this is just not equitable. The result is or will be workers revolting against this inequality.”
Read: Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs earned 246-times more than average employee in 2022: report