Salaried workers’ pay growth has outpaced gains among hourly earners in the past year, with advertised wages declining outright among hourly workers in IT, software development, and other STEM fields, according to a new analysis from the Indeed Hiring Lab.
The analysis drew on pay information across millions of job postings from the beginning of 2025 through early 2026, finding that posted wages for salaried roles grew 2.9% while advertised pay for their hourly counterparts rose only 1.7%.
The wage growth gap between hourly earners and salaried workers, who already tend to be in higher-income positions and receive workplace benefits, is all the more important as rising consumer prices climb past workers’ pay gains. Prices in April surged by 3.8% compared to a year earlier — largely thanks to rising energy costs — while average hourly earnings rose just 3.6%.
Some workers will feel that pinch more than others.
The analysis noted that since early-career workers, freelancers, and contractors are more likely to be hired on an hourly basis, they may be especially squeezed right now. What’s more, “almost all STEM sectors — including industrial engineering, software development, IT systems & solutions, and data & analytics — saw negative wage growth in hourly job postings, as did white-collar sectors of marketing and sales,” Indeed Hiring Lab economist Sneha Puri wrote.
The pay divergence underscores how workers performing similar jobs might face vastly different economic circumstances depending on whether they’re hourly or salaried.
“These trends suggest that wage growth is increasingly bifurcated not just across industries, but within them,” Puri wrote. ”If the gap persists, salary structure may become an increasingly important factor in how workers build — or lose — purchasing power over time.”
Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at emma.ockerman@yahooinc.com.
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