Americans Worried About Wage Reductions? One In Five Employees Concerned About Pay Cuts

RTR4AKBF — A recent paycheck for Delores Leonard shows her hourly wage of $8.25 for working at a McDonald's Restaurant, the minimum wage in in Chicago, Sept. 29, 2014. Workers have grown more confident that their wages won't be cut, an August poll found. Reuters

Employed Americans are less worried about their pay being cut, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. One in five Americans with a job said in August that they were worried about their wages being reduced in the near future, which is a significantly lower percentage than the same figure in recent years.

As the unemployment rate has steadily decreased, workers in the past few years have become less worried about various aspects of their jobs, including being laid off, losing benefits or having hours cut, according to Gallup. Still, attitudes have not returned to pre-recession positivity. On average, just 16 percent of employed Americans were worried about wage reductions from 2003-2008.

Americans were especially worried about wage reductions amid the uncertainty of the Great Recession, with the percentage of those concerned about pay cuts hitting a high of 32 percent in 2009. In 2013, the figure was 31 percent. Last year, it dropped sharply to about one in four people.

In 2015, 20 percent of employed Americans (one in five) were worried about wage reductions, Gallup found. In early August, the poll surveyed a random sample of 1,011 adults living in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. through telephone interviews.

American Unemployment Rate Over Time | FindTheData

The poll on wage reductions found that Americans could be beginning to feel that their lives were returning to early 2000s economic highs or that people have begun getting used to a new climate and growing more comfortable with "a new reality," Gallup concluded.

The lack of concern over wage reductions comes amid a new push toward a raised minimum wage. Seattle passed a law mandating a $15 minimum wage and New York City has planned the same minimum for fast food workers. The White House has pushed for higher minimum wages as well.

The Gallup poll was conducted before global economic uncertainty following an economic slowdown in China after stocks fell sharply on what has been dubbed "Black Monday." After the worst month for U.S. stocks since 2012, stock futures fell sharply Tuesday morning amid growing concerns in China.