Wages barely fall in a recession, even when workers would take a pay cut to keep their job

Classical theory predicts that in a downturn, wages should fall until the job market clears and unemployment disappears. In practice, nominal wages are 'sticky downward': employers rarely cut pay outright, preferring to freeze wages, lay off staff, or let inflation erode real wages instead. John Maynard Keynes used this stickiness to argue recessions could persist for years rather than self-correcting quickly, reshaping how economists think about unemployment.

— John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money — Macmillan, 1936