Lower-paid workers score biggest raises by switching jobs amid AI-driven 'job hugging'

In the quiet arithmetic of labor, a reversal is taking shape: those who have long earned the least are now gaining the most by daring to leave, while those who have long earned the most find themselves too afraid to move. July's data shows job-switching lower-wage workers achieving a 12.5% pay increase — a three-year high — even as white-collar professionals in technology and finance cling to their desks, haunted by the specter of automation. The labor market is not simply tightening or loosening; it is bifurcating along lines of courage, scarcity, and the uneven arrival of artificial intellig