Americans are tipping less in the past few years, as claimed by new data.
Bankrate, a New York City-based consumer financial services company, conducted a survey to see how much U.S. residents are spending on service tips.
It turns out that the tips provided by Americans for a variety of services are steadily declining.
Bankrate's new survey explained why many U.S. residents are no longer providing tips to restaurants and other businesses.
Why Americans Are Now Tipping Less
According to The New York Post, Bankrate's survey revealed that 66% of American respondents have a negative view when it comes to service tips.
Many of them said that businesses should increase the salaries of their employees instead of making staff rely on service tips (41% of survey respondents agree with this).
Aside from this, here are other factors affecting American's tip decisions:
- Pre-entered tip screens annoy them (32%)
- Believing present tipping culture is already out of control (30%)
- They prefer paying higher service prices instead of tipping (16%)
- Confused about who to give their tips to and how much should they provide (15%)
Bankrate's Senior Industry Analyst Ted Rossman said that one of the biggest factors that give negative views to service tips is the worsening economy.
"A lot of people seem to feel like things cost enough already, so they're not as likely to tip on top of that," explained Rossman.
Should Americans Give Tips?
In the U.S., some businesses (such as hotels and restaurants) already include service fees in consumers' bills. However, some services don't do this even though they pay their waiters, waitresses, and other staff very little.
Rossman said that many restaurant workers make as little as $2.13 per hour; this is also what Qantas says on its official website.
Because of their very low salaries, some service employees even chase customers who don't give them tips in desperation.
This is why (although it's not mandatory) the tipping culture in the United States considers tipping staff 15% to 20% of on top of the bill as a standard.
Of course, it is still up to you if you want to tip the employees giving you services.
After all, the majority of U.S. residents are badly affected by the worsening inflation.
