Cleveland Fed, Report: Sticky Wages on the Layoff Margin

“We design and field an innovative survey of unemployment insurance (UI) recipients that yields new insights about wage stickiness on the layoff margin. Most UI recipients express a willingness to accept wage cuts of 5-10 percent to save their jobs, and one-third would accept a 25 percent cut. Yet worker-employer discussions about cuts in pay, benefits, or hours in lieu of layoffs are exceedingly rare. When asked why employers don’t raise the possibility of job-preserving pay cuts, four-in-ten UI recipients don’t know …”