WSJ reports flat raises and higher healthcare costs ahead per Mercer’s survey of 1,100+ companies.
Key points:

• Merit raises in 2025 are projected to remain largely flat at an average of 3.3%.
• Job changers aren’t getting as big a pay bump as they used to. People who changed jobs in September made 6.6% more than their old job, the lowest rate bump for job changers since the spring of 2021, per ADP. (August was 7.3%, for example.) People who stayed at their jobs only made an average of 4.7% more money. The chief economist of ADP notes, “The payoff for job changing is not quite as robust as it was earlier in this year.”
• More than half of the companies Mercer surveyed plan to pass on the higher healthcare costs to employees in 2025 through higher deductibles.
• If you want to negotiate more value for yourself to offset rising medical care costs, the article suggests asking for a sign-on (I agree) or wellness and lifestyle benefits like child-care reimbursement or annual gym membership (I disagree. I don’t usually see this request, which might reflect negatively on you). I agree you should ask your network what’s possible (AND what’s normal).

If you are in-house in the Bay Area and want to find out what comp and benefits are currently standard, I suggest you take the AABA/APABA-SV in-house survey: https://forms.gle/npST6wwHixs6qrVf6, which is open through October. If you fill it out, you’ll get the results after we crunch numbers. (Survey takers need to be working in-house in the Bay Area or living here if they are working remotely, but do not need to be Asian American/Pacific Islander.)