Salaried employees saw their advertised pay climb 2.9% from the start of 2025 through early 2026. Hourly workers managed just 1.7%. The gap matters. It hits early-career staff, freelancers and contractors hardest. And it arrives at a moment when consumer prices rose 3.8% in April while average hourly earnings advanced only 3.6%. Yahoo Finance laid out the numbers drawn from millions of Indeed job postings. Economist Sneha Puri at Indeed Hiring Lab spotted the divergence immediately. “These trends suggest that wage growth is increasingly bifurcated not just across industries, but within them,” she wrote. “If the gap persists, salary structure may become an increasingly important factor in how workers build — or lose — purchasing power over time.” Short. Sharp. The split shows up inside the same fields. STEM roles offer a clear example. Industrial engineering, software development, IT systems, data analytics — all recorded outright declines in hourly posted wages.…