Extending Job Evaluation Theory to Help Address the Cost-Of-Living Wages

In the current Cost-of-Living Crisis, Living wage values are calculated backwards from the cost of an employee’s imagined needs, rather than forwards from the benefits that different wage values deliver for both, employees and employers. Moving wage baselines from Minimum to a true-score Living wage, extant research shows, transforms employee job attitudes and wellbeing from negative to positive, a qualitative shift that could realistically translate into sizeable gains in work performance. In Test Utility models, the more the living wage increases work performance by an amount greater than the cost of increasing the baseline wage from a bare minimum, the more sustainable it must be. We discuss a protocol for testing that prediction, through non-linear multilevel mediation, as an extension and reorientation of Job Evaluation Theory (JET). This new JET hinges on standard-setting by finding true-score living wages that are cost-effective, functional, and sustainable for all.