The Shift to Remote Work Lessens Wage-Growth Pressures

Arbeitspapier

The recent shift to remote work raised the amenity value of employment. As compensation adjusts to share the amenity-value gains with employers, wage-growth pressures moderate. We find empirical support for this mechanism in the wage-setting behavior of U.S. employers, and we develop novel survey data to quantify its force. Our data imply a cumulative wage-growth moderation of 2.0 percentage points over two years. This moderation offsets more than half the real-wage catchup effect that Blanchard (2022) highlights in his analysis of near- term inflation pressures. The amenity-values gains associated with the recent rise of remote work also lower labor's share of national income by 1.1 percentage points. In addition, the "unexpected compression" of wages since early 2020 (Autor and Dube, 2022) is partly explained by the same amenity-value effect, which operates differentially across the earnings distribution.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15385

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Price Level; Inflation; Deflation ; Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
• Thema: inflation dynamics ; wage growth ; amenity value ; remote work ; recession risk ; business expectations ; labor’s share of national income ; wage compression

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Barrero, Jose Maria ; Bloom, Nicholas ; Davis, Steven J. ; Meyer, Brent ; Mihaylov, Emil
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2022

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/263601
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ