December 17, 2014
The NYT was seriously misled by the jump in the average hourly wage reported last month, headlining an article, “Economic Recovery Spreads to the Middle Class.” The basis for the headline is the 0.4 percent increase in the average hourly wage reported in November. As fans of wage data everywhere know, the monthly data are very erratic. In fact, the November increase followed two months of weak wage growth. As a result, the annual rate of increase in wages for the most recent three months (September, October, November) compared to the prior three months was just 1.8 percent. That is below the 2.1 percent rate over the last year.
It may turn out that November really is a turning point and we see more rapid wage growth going forward, but given the weakness of the labor market (we are still down 7 million jobs from trend) it is more likely that it was simply a reversal from the unusually low numbers reported the prior two months. It is also worth noting that, contrary to the concern expressed in this article, wages for production and non-supervisory workers have actually been rising somewhat faster than wages for all workers, meaning that less highly paid workers have been seeing relatively larger pay increases in the recovery.
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