College graduates expect higher salaries than ever before, and it could signal that America’s shrinking middle class is in trouble – By Megan Leonhardt (Fortune) / Dec 20, 2022
If you’ve got a “now hiring” sign in the window, you may want to reevaluate how much you’re willing to pay that new employee—especially if they have a degree.
It turns out that the lowest wage, on average, that workers with college degrees will accept is now $92,100, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s November 2022 SCE Labor Market Survey released Monday.
While what average-wage Americans would accept to change jobs (known as the “reservation wage”) has been trending steadily upward since 2017, the tightened labor market during the COVID-19 pandemic sent it spiking. Among all workers, the average reservation wage was $73,667 last month, an increase from $72,873 recorded in July 2022.
