U.S. wage growth might be cooling down overall, but there are still opportunities to find jobs with significant annual raises!
The job market continues to be a topic of hot debate. Data suggests a potential slowdown in U.S. wage growth. But this trend isn’t uniform across all industries. Some positions are still experiencing significant annual raises, making them prime targets for those looking to boost their income.
According to a new analysis by job site Indeed, although wage increases are no longer rising as fast as they were during the pandemic, workers are getting relatively big annual raises in occupational sectors like legal, dental, child care, cleaning and sanitation, and medical information.
Indeed, which tracks average pay advertised in its online job listings, states that wages grew nationally at 3.1% a year in March, well below the recent 9.3% peak in January 2022. However, Julia Pollak, chief economist at career site ZipRecruiter, says there’s a “massive variation across industries”.
The analysis, done by Indeed, shows that in 2024 wage growth is above average in 47% of job sectors compared with 2019. The legal profession has seen the strongest increase, with average worker salaries going up by 5.7% in March 2024 compared to the previous year. This growth rate is just 0.1% lower than what was observed six months earlier.
After that, comes the dental and child care industries that have experienced a 4.8% annual growth each. And then, followed by medical information and cleaning and sanitation fields that saw slower but still notable growth of 3.9% annually.
However, software developers have had the slowest annual growth since March 2023, at just 0.4%. This is a significant decline from their recent peak of 9% growth in April 2022. It’s important to keep in mind that a strong wage growth doesn’t always translate directly into high salaries.
“I don’t think someone will leave their software development job to work in child care because wage growth is higher. But if you were working in [similar-paying jobs like] retail or food prep and you wanted higher wages, that might be worth looking at”, said Allison Shrivastava, a labor economist and author of the Indeed report.
In the United States, child care workers earn an average annual salary of $32,070, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This translates to an hourly wage of around $15.42. In comparison, software developers make an average of $138,110 annually or $66.40 per hour and dentists earn an average of $200,870 a year or $96.57 hourly.
Wage growth surged in 2021 and into 2022 at a time when labor was scarce and workers were “demanding to be made whole for inflation”, Pollak said. She said it also “peaked at different times for different industries” during the Covid-19 pandemic due to a “complex web” of factors like labor supply and demand.
The rise of remote work during the pandemic impacted the appeal of certain jobs. In-person roles, like those in food service, experienced higher turnover rates compared to remote positions. This trend is reflected in wage growth.
For instance, ZipRecruiter data shows significant growth in earnings for accommodation and food service workers, peaking at 16.1% in December 2021. In contrast, information sector workers saw a more modest peak in wage growth at 7.8% in September 2022.
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