A 2024–2025 Resume Genius survey of 1,000 US workers found that 57% regretted how they handled salary negotiation, with the dominant sentiment being that they wished they had negotiated more aggressively or at all. On the action side, roughly 13% of those who did negotiate did not report being glad they did — a complement proxy, not a direct regret measure. The 4:1 asymmetry fits cleanly into Gilovich and Medvec’s inaction-dominance pattern. Separately, a Fidelity Investments study of 1,524 workers found that 85% of those who counteroffered got at least some of what they asked for, suggesting the fear of negotiating is disproportionate to the actual downside risk.
The gender and generational breakdowns reinforce the pattern. Pew Research found that 58% of US workers accepted their initial offer without any negotiation attempt, and Resume Genius reported that women were slightly more likely than men to regret not negotiating at all (20% vs 17%). Younger workers show the steepest inaction regret: 65% of Gen Z and 63% of Millennials wished they had pushed harder, compared with 44% of Baby Boomers. This age gradient is consistent with the Gilovich temporal model, where inaction regret intensifies over time as the counterfactual — “what if I had asked?” — becomes harder to dismiss.
The main caveat is measurement asymmetry. The 57% inaction-regret figure blends people who never negotiated with those who negotiated timidly, and the 13% action-regret rate is a derived complement, not a direct survey question. The Fidelity study’s 85% “success” rate counts any partial win, which may still have left the negotiator feeling undercompensated. Even so, fewer than 1% of employers rescind an offer over a reasonable counteroffer, which means the downside risk that inhibits negotiation is largely imagined. The asymmetry is directionally robust; the precise ratio should be read as approximate.