US employers cut pay-increase forecasts

? Many US employers are having to offset the effects of a lacklustre financial year by reigning in their pay strategy and tightening the purse strings.

With final 2003 business results now in sight, more than 4 in 10 US employers are scaling back their 2004 pay-increase budgets for at least some portion of their employee population, finds a new survey from Mercer Human Resource Consulting, a global consulting agency. At these organizations, pay increases originally budgeted for an average of 3.6%