If you feel like you need a raise you are not alone. U.S. News reports that salary increase still have not recovered from
the recession and new surveys don't see salary increases in the near future. One depressing study project salaries to barley exceed the rate of inflation.
So, with little slack in the job market, fatter paychecks ought to be close behind, right? Not this time. Salary increases have yet to bounce back in proportion to the strength of the overall market. And two recent surveys indicate that wages will rise only moderately in the coming months. Publishing company BNA's Wage Trend Indicator, which tracks private salaries and wages on a quarterly basis, predicts only a slight rise in third-quarter pay. More disheartening news comes from a recent survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which projects average salaries to exceed inflation by only 1 percent in 2006, less than the 2.4 percent worldwide.
Some employers are also holding vacant positions open longer than normal which also sounds like a bad economic sign. In a good economy they would feel the need to hire to stay competitive with their competitors.
"Companies feel under such cost squeezes that they are looking at other alternatives than raising wages," says Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. That means holding a vacant position longer, for example, to wait for a more experienced candidate who won't require expensive training, or filling open jobs with less expensive, younger workers.
