Wage rates have decelerated across a broad range of industries and occupations, and unit labor costs have fallen sharply. A simple histogram of the distribution of nominal wage changes in recent years does show a spike at zero, indicating some resistance to reductions in nominal wage rates, but the spike does not seem particularly large relative to those in earlier recessions.
To wrap up, employers play an important role in their workers’ financial security in later life and will continue to do so even with the shift away from defined benefit to defined contribution plans. An increasing amount of evidence indicates that how firms set up these plans will affect worker participation and contribution rates and what types of assets they will buy.