Salary-increase budgets for U.S. employers are projected to grow next year by just 0.1 percent above the actual average budget increase for 2019, confirming that wage growth isn’t accelerating much despite record-low unemployment.
U.S. salary budgets are projected to rise by an average (mean) of 3.3 percent in 2020, up from an actual year-over-year increase of 3.2 percent for 2019 and 3.1 percent in 2018, according to the WorldatWork 2019-2020 Salary Budget Survey: Top-Level Results, released in July. Survey data were collected through May 2019 from more than 6,000 responses, including from companies making no salary adjustments.
