Study finds workers with college degree expect salary of at least $92,000: New York Fed

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Dave Briggs and Seana Smith discuss a new report from the New York Fed that found salary expectations vary widely depending on whether or not a worker has a college degree.

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SEANA SMITH: Inflation, it's not only changing Americans' buying habits but also our expectations. According to a new survey, data from the New York Fed found that the average lowest wage that respondents will be willing to accept for a new job is up to $73,667. But when you break it down by education, college grads, they want just over $92,000. That's up more than $1,000 from a year ago. Those without a college degree expect around $59,800, which is less than the $60,000 a year-- the $60,000-- $60,100 a year ago.

A little bit confusing with all those numbers, but the big takeaway, Dave, is I think workers now-- many workers are demanding a higher salary. I don't think that's a huge surprise to anyone given the fact that costs have been rising now pretty significantly from where they were a year ago. If you're paying more in almost every aspect of your life, I think you're going to, and you should, want to be compensated more fairly.

DAVE BRIGGS: Employers should expect that if they're not giving their employees a raise right now, they are de facto giving them a pay cut. That's just the reality. That is the economy we are in. We're talking about 7% inflation. So if you're not keeping up with that, which wage growth overall is not-- the Fed wants to tame wage growth, which is, what, about 5%, I believe, at last check. Significant but not keeping up with inflation.

It's an interesting moment we're in when you bring in the Fed into that conversation because they want to tame wage growth, but it's not keeping up with inflation. What will happen with this labor market? Will it break that dynamic in the months ahead? Hard to know, but that's--

SEANA SMITH: And also many employees have the upper hand in all of this.

DAVE BRIGGS: Right now.

SEANA SMITH: Right now they do just in terms of the labor shortage. There simply are not as many workers out there in terms of what is needed. So of course if the economy continues to significantly weaken, we could see that balance shift pretty significantly. But at least at this point, employees have the upper hand. They're able to demand those higher wages. We'll see, though, how long that's going to be the case [INAUDIBLE].

DAVE BRIGGS: Yeah and that college-degree number, you always expect that to continue to climb because the cost of college is dramatically increasing just about every year, so naturally you're going to see that expectation continue to rise with the rising cost of college.