Only 4% of U.S. employers are giving equal 'peanut butter' raises, as AI adoption drives performance-based pay divisions

A Mercer survey found that only about 4% of U.S. employers are giving out equal raises to all employees, despite an earlier Payscale study showing about 44% of employers said they planned to or were considering equal raises.

Companies are increasingly tying compensation to AI usage: Google has incorporated AI usage into performance reviews for software engineers, and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said AI fluency is required for worker promotion. Meanwhile, a WalkMe survey of more than 3,700 executives and employees found that 54% of workers were bypassing their company's AI tools to do work manually.

Employees who fully adopted AI tools—called 'super users'—were three times more likely to have received a promotion and a pay raise in the past year, according to Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, creating a disparity that undermines the fairness argument behind equal raises.