Sept. 3, 2025
The Upjohn Institute New Hires Quality Index increased 0.2 percent between June and July to $22.17, its highest level for 2025. Hiring volume dropped slightly, 0.1 percent, continuing its downward trajectory.
Each year, in the September news release around Labor Day, index creator Brad Hershbein compares the NHQI with actual, reported wages of newly hired workers. Doing so this year, Hershbein concludes that the economy looks increasingly fragile.
Considering the two measures together, Hershbein finds that the average inflation-adjusted wage growth of new hires, controlling for changes in their occupations and demographics, fell 0.6 percent between 2022 and 2025 after having risen 5.9 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Different parts of the wage distribution have experienced different growth rates, with the highest-earning new hires seeing the strongest growth until early 2023, when their real wages dropped even as those for lower-earning newly hired workers continued to increase. In the last 12 months, the highest earners again saw the fastest growth, suggesting the post-pandemic flattening in wage inequality may have ended.
Read the full analysis or explore the index.