Workers’ wages have picked up in March, but there is no sign of a large increase in their acceleration. Average hourly earnings in the private sector on average increased by 7 cents, to $24.86 according to the U.S. Labor Department. This was a 0.3% increase, which was up from the 0.1% rise in February. Hourly earnings were only up 2.1% from last year, which is little change compared to the 2% annual average of each of the past 5 years. Many economists have predicted that wage growth would accelerate with a tighter labor market and more competition amongst workers. Additionally, large corporations, such as Wal-Mart and Target and McDonald’s have announced large pay raises for their employees in recent months. Most economists say that these large-scale pay raises have not been fully felt by the economy yet, and for that reason, are not showing up as large effects in the data.
4 Comments
It will be interesting to see how much of an impact the wage increases will have in the upcoming months. There will almost certainly be noticeable job loss, but especially in the first few months, I’m curious how much of an impact the higher wages will have on consumption. I would anticipate an increase in spending by workers who are feeling the effects of significantly greater income.
I do not remember the official numbers on it, but since most people do not actually earn the minimum wage, I wonder what sized effect it will have on wage increase numbers.
When I look at the graph, wages are pretty flat, real wages are more volatile because prices are decreasing.
Remembering that the fall in CPI has largely declined because of falling oil prices, I wonder if people will feel more pressured to take jobs after the CPI returns to pre-March 2014 levels. Maybe the employment numbers haven’t bounced back because people arent as incentivized to immediately find a job.
Comments are closed.