Cost of Living, Cost of Trust
I had a visceral reaction when I read an article last week from World at Work. Instead of a knee jerk reaction post, I wanted to sit with it.
Key words are listed just under the headline and author’s name, with employee experience at the top. “The Difference Between ‘Cost of Living’ and ‘Cost of Labor’ ” (1) is intended to equip HR professionals with the information needed to answer employee questions and objections to pay raises in proportion to the cost to live. I’m having a hard time reconciling that with an employee experience tool.
I have never met anyone who didn’t want to earn more money. That is a baseline in the understanding of human nature. I suspect the publication of this topic now isn’t about the one-off employee conversation but a preparation for the times we are living in.
PwC found in their 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey that 59% of employees are stressed about finances. That number increases to 85% of Gen Z workers. (2)
National Low Income Housing Coalition reported last month the average hourly wage earned by renters is $9.89 less than the national two-bedroom housing wage and $4.35 less than the one-bedroom housing age. (3)
What makes this a difficult conversation is to contrast this with corporate profit margins which have reached 19.5% in 2026 according to EPB Research Sunday Newsletter. (4) Two-thirds of SNAP benefit recipients work full-time. Seventeen Fortune 500 companies are among the top employers of SNAP beneficiaries, according to the GAO. (5) Compare this with the widening gap ratio of 312-to-1 difference between median pay of S&P 500 company CEOs to their workers. (6)
The PwC report goes further into where I wanted to take this conversation.
Financially stressed employees are 5 times more likely to be distracted at work and half of them spend more than 3 hours per week dealing with financial concerns. When one in four employees run out of money between paychecks, that’s a problem for employees and employers.
When people face acute financial panic such as debt and housing instability, money stops being a carrot-and-stick approach of employee-employer relationship but turns it into a fight-or-flight trauma response which diverts the brain from focus, productivity, and problem-solving. Over time, this creates emotional exhaustion and detachment that can show up as burnout.
If a company needs to use talking points with their workforce about a living wage, that’s a symptom of a disease within the company—how it sees the people driving revenue. Companies earning 8.5x revenue per employee don’t need talking points. Trust does the work instead. (7)
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