Of course, everyone wants their pay to keep up with inflation. But there's a tough reality in the labor market right now. There just aren't a ton of job openings.
That's a very different situation from the inflation spike of 2021 and 2022, said Betsey Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan.
Back then, workers could pretty much demand whatever pay they wanted to deal with rising prices.
"The number of job openings swamped the number of people looking to change jobs. Basically anybody who wanted to change jobs could. And you know, it was really one of the most dynamic periods I've ever seen in the U.S. labor market," Stevenson said.
All that job switching meant workers came out ahead.
"They saw huge wage gains from those job changes that they made," she added.
