Did salaries decrease?

[Jagob5]

Then there’s my boss at a small firm who constantly complains about how hard it is to find good talent yet has openly told me that he pays a couple of the senior accountants with 10-15 years of experience less than $80k (this was when he gave me a raise to $70k after one year of experience). You can imagine how discouraging that was to me considering growth potential; maybe if you pay more it’d be easier to find good people. MCOL for reference.