Money & WorkFact
Your pay rarely gets cut. It gets frozen instead.
When a company struggles, it rarely lowers wages. In wage data from 16 countries, researchers found a striking pile-up at exactly zero: firms freeze salaries and let inflation shrink the real value rather than cut nominally. The reason: a cut feels like punishment and wrecks motivation. A pay freeze at 3% inflation is mathematically the same thing, but feels neutral.
Useful: A year without a raise is a pay cut, just without the word.
Source: doi.org