Even after the recession, pay will remain battered - Boston Business Journal:

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Salary freezes, wage cuts and economic uncertainty will dent pay hikes and keep salaries largely flat for yearsto come. Thosr same factors will also undercut starting salarieas for the legions of job seekers looking for work in a labodr market where companies have theupper hand, according to Boston-area employment Indeed, the vast majority of companies have alread y pared compensation in some shape or According to a recent survey, nearly half of all organizationsa have reduced staff through 60 percent of companies have instituted hiring 51 percent of companies have implemented pay freezes; 70 percent of companiess have reduced salary budgets; and 73 percenft have cut back on bonus awards.
only 7 percent of companiexs have actually reduced compensation forcurrent workers, according to Needham-based Salary.cok (Nasdaq: SLRY). “For people already in the job, it’ss not likely that their salargy willgo down, it just won’t move forwardd as it did in the said Lena Bottos, vice presidenft of customer relationship management at But some say salarty cuts have been more widespread. Bob executive director of the , said it is a commoh cost-cutting strategy for companies and will likeluy affect wages for yearsto “The long and the short of it is ther will be some impact overall,” said Eubank.
The grouo that will feel the changes the accordingto Bottos, will be job seekers, who will most likelty see lower starting salaries across the board. “It’zs an employer’s market,” said “As more people are looking for employers can pick and choose and drivesalariexs down. Companies are just like (consumers) — even the ones who have monet to spend, aren’t.” salary increases will likely be nonexistentt or extremely smallnext year. Experts say any increaswe is likely to be less than the 3percentf — consistent with last year’s average.
According to CareerBuilder’s second-quarter job forecast, 46 percent of companiese say compensation will not while 42 percent of companies plan to increase salaries fortheir full-timers, down from 70 percent this time last According to the , average weekly earnings increasedd by 1.3 percent year over year through “I think if you were getting a 3 percent raise a year ago, and you didn’tt get 3 percent this year — I wouldn’t expect a 6 percenyt raise next year,” said Bill Driscoll, president of the New Englanfd district of the staffing firm To be growth rates for employee compensation sloweds during the first quarter.
Wages and salaries for privatee industry workersincreased 0.2 percent from Decembee 2008 to March, comparedx with 0.5 percent for the year-earlierf period, according to the Bureau of Labo Statistics.