The sticky wage theory hypothesizes that employee pay tends to respond slowly to changes in company performance or to the economy. According to the theory, when unemployment rises, the wages of those workers that remain employed tend to stay the same or grow at a slower rate rather than falling with the decrease in demand for labor. Specifically, wages are often said to be sticky-down, meaning that they can move up easily but move down only with difficulty.

The theory is attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes, who called the phenomenon “nominal rigidity" of wages.