While at work the other day I was talking to a friend that said, 'you know Mark, everything is going up these days but wages'. After having a good laugh with him about that comment, I got to thinking and he certainly was right about the statement. We all know that the price of gas has risen to well over $4 per gallon in most parts of the country, but along with that increase in gas prices - food along with almost everything else we need for our daily lives has been going up as well. The one constant though for most Americans is that their wages have not gone up that much over the past two years as the price of gas has caused everything else in their lives to increase in price.
At some point soon, small and big businesses alike will be forced to review the salaries that they offer to their employees. Mind you, the idea of raising wages at a time when the cost of doing business is rising as well will not be an easy thing for most businesses to do, but if they don't start increasing the wages of their employees - some other company will steal them away. Since most people look at life in a pretty selfish way, they don't notice that their employers are also paying high gas prices as well. However, in the end what all businesses must do to stay competitive in their marketplace is to either do such a good job that they can justify increasing costs to their customers or the other solution will be to start laying off employees.
Right now, gas prices have gone up so fast that wages have not had a chance to be adjusted to better effect the realities of employees. Employees are paying high gas prices to commute to and from work and when they get home their grocery and electric bills are going up as well. However, so far, most companies have not increased the pay of their workers to help offset the ever increasing prices that consumers have been paying now for almost two years. Within the next six month, companies both large and small will be forced to deal with increased inflationary costs like gas and food prices and adjust their average employees salaries higher.
Personally, I believe there is another option that some companies will try which will help ease the burden on their employees while at the same time not having to increase employee pay. For years, more and more people have been doing their jobs from home because in today's modern age - people that work on a computer are able to do their work from anywhere. If more companies allow their employees to work from home, that would allow the company to in effect be giving their employees a raise - without actually increasing the amount of their paycheck. There is also another side benefit to allowing employees to work from home and that benefit is that it helps the environment. Rather than million of people driving their cars to work each day, they instead will stay at home and do the same work without polluting the air with their car exhaust.
Title: Prices Are Rising Fast, Wages Are Not
Written: June 16 2008
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