In an effort to help employers remain financially afloat, many employees have accepted furloughs, reduced hours and pay cuts in the past year. But as time goes on, the question remains how many employees will leave their current job in an effort to regain their lost wages — and how many of them will never get back to previous pay levels.

"There's no question that as things get better in the economy you're going to have people who are going to get nervous about their pay and jump ship to make more money," says Warren Cinnick, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago. "But the reality is that it's still an employer's market. The average person has the lowest leverage in the job market right now than in the past 25 years."

The Conference Board reported in its recent annual survey of salaries that the median salary increase for 2010 for all employee groups is expected to be 3 percent — the lowest since the group began forecasting salaries 25 years ago and down half a percent from the previous year. Even top brass will take a hit — their median salaries are forecast to drop two full percentage points, from 3.5 percent to 2.5 percent.

For employees like Amy Lee, 27, the denial of a pay raise for the last two years, coupled with the increased workload because half her co-workers have been laid off, is partly what prompted her to begin looking for other opportunities.

As a university academic counselor in California, Lee says that even though she received a "stellar" performance evaluation, she was told by her boss there was no money for raises this year when she made the request for more compensation.

"That made me start looking around," she says.

Another employer soon offered Lee a job, along with a 33 percent pay boost. When Lee told her boss, she was immediately offered an 11 percent raise if she'd stay. "To be honest, I wasn't happy when they made that offer. When I had asked for a raise after getting that great performance evaluation, they immediately said, 'no.' They weren't even going to try."

The issue of pay is cropping up at all levels in organizations. Recently, General Motors Co. had to rescind white-collar pay cuts made last spring because it said its pay scales were no longer competitive and employees were leaving to work for other automakers and manufacturing companies.

Cinnick says it will be the "pivotal" employees who will have some leverage in negotiating increased pay, although it will also depend on the industry.