Frustrated With Your Boss? Blame Inflation
New research sheds light on how price pressures change office dynamics and may explain why we have generally been so gloomy.
Fighting for purchasing power.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
As a general matter, workers hate asking for a raise. It’s time-consuming, awkward and even risky. Should you shop around for an outside offer to gain leverage? What’s the best forum to broach the topic? And what if the conversation leads to lasting resentment or retaliation? Under normal circumstances, some of us wouldn’t even bother, even if we knew we were forgoing earnings in the process.
But the inflation of the past several years has changed that. Rising consumer prices disrupted our innate preference for conflict-free stasis, forcing us to fight for our purchasing power. Resignations surged and so did nominal wages. Evidently, many of us finally learned how to have those awkward conversations.