Raising wages may not be 'enough' to sway workers, organizational psychologist suggests


"I'm not sure that rising wages are going to be enough" to convince swaths of people to apply for job openings, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said Sunday during an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press.
Grant told host Chuck Todd that "only time will tell" how employment numbers shake out in the post-pandemic landscape, but he did say he was "really surprised" by one data point that showed that "more than half of Americans say that they want their next job to be working independently for themselves, either as entrepreneurs or in the creator economy." So, it's possible that the "sense of freedom and flexibility that many of us got a taste of during the pandemic" will be even more appealing than the prospect of higher salaries, potentially leaving businesses hard pressed to hire workers.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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