Did you receive a pay raise this year? If so, and it was enough to offset the increasing prices amid record inflation, polling suggests you're in the minority.
Only 17% of Americans said their wages had kept up with record rates of inflation in early 2022, according to a poll commissioned by The New York Times. The prices of all goods and services went from increasing at a 2% rate annually in March 2021 to 8.5% by March 2022.
Earnings growth largely stagnated over the last decade for the typical American worker, growing at a rate of about 2% each year—a rate that began ticking upward as the COVID-19 pandemic's arrival in 2020 put immense pressure on the U.S. workforce.
Women abandoned the workforce in droves as schools closed temporarily to in-person learning. Many child care providers also were forced to shutter permanently as families sheltered at home. Many older workers nearing retirement left their jobs. Since economies began roaring back to life across the country, employers struggled to find and attract workers and raise pay to entice new hires.
To identify the states where American workers have made the most gains, Stacker collected data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the percent change in average weekly wages by state for the first quarter of 2022. States are ranked based on the percent change between the first quarter of 2021 and 2022. Any ties were broken by looking at a more precise calculation.
With a 2-1 ratio of job openings to people in the workforce for most of this year, workers have discovered newfound leverage to obtain higher pay and benefits by switching jobs.
Connecticut had the largest net change in average weekly wages, with an increase of $145. Connecticut is home to a large financial services industry and a relatively wealthy population compared to the rest of the nation, though, and ranked among the top 10 in terms of year-over-year change. The state that saw the largest percentage increase in wages year over year was Wyoming.
New York has the highest average weekly wages, at $1,972; Mississippi has the lowest, at $879. In Mississippi, however, the typical worker saw their pay increase by $69 from 2021 to 2022, ranking the Southern U.S. state in the upper half of wage growth. Mississippi is among the five states with no minimum wage law, and a legislative proposal to institute and gradually raise a minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2025 failed to become law this year.
