News from SHRM

For employers, high inflation puts upward pressure on wages and salaries. Organizations that don’t meet employees’ expectations risk losing talented workers to employers that will pay higher salaries. Read more.

States reported that 262,000 workers filed for new unemployment benefits during the week ending August 6. Unemployment claims have generally been rising this year and are hovering near the highest level since Nov. 2021. Prior to that, claims had been running around their lowest levels since the late 1960s, but started ticking higher in June, coinciding with an increase in job cuts and hiring freezes being reported, primarily in the technology sector. Read more.

The IRS announced that the 2023 health plan affordability threshold—used to determine if an employer's lowest-premium health plan meets the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) affordability requirement—will be 9.12 percent of an employee's "household income," down from the 2022 limit of 9.61 percent. Read more.

U.S. employers added 528,000 new jobs in July, surpassing economists' forecasts, according to the latest employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5 percent, close to what is considered full employment and a half-century low. Labor force participation, however, was lower in July, falling to 62.1 percent, down from 62.2 in June. Average hourly earnings grew 5.2 percent in July from a year earlier, a slight acceleration over the prior month. Read more.

SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, is answering HR questions as part of a series for USA Today.

Do you have an HR or work-related question you'd like him to answer? Submit it here. 

The program that I work on in my organization is slated to shut down by the end of the year. Our workload in the meantime has been drastically reduced. I received a verbal offer from an internal group, but it will take some time for them to put a formal offer together. In the meantime, I have been asked by an adjacent department to transfer into their group. How should I approach turning down the second offer without divulging the first offer? —Millie 

Read more.