> >Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>>
>>>Yet despite little official slack in the labor market, wages remain
>>>basically stagnant in this business cycle upturn.
>>
>>No they aren't really. The average real hourly wage is up 7% since
>>mid-1995 - not a great performance over the course of 4.5 years, but
>>not bad by recent U.S. history.
>
>Doug, yet how much of this increase in the average real wage is due to big
>gains by financial analysts?
They don't count in the establishment survey, which is limited to "nonsupervisory workers" - about 80% of the private sector workforce.
>
>>Every decile of the wage distribution
>>is up, for both men and women.
>
>Are you saying wages earned by person over a year are up or are you saying
>that hourly wages are up
Hourly.
> (and let's not forget off the book hours before we
>conclude hourly wages are up) or are you saying that unit labor and/or real
>unit labor costs are up?
Didn't say that. ULCs are up, but not by much.
> > TIght labor markets and
>>a higher minimum wage do have an effect.
>
>I don't know if the labor market is ever tight now with labor saving
>technical change, globalization of production, immigration and the culture
>of overwork as Kelley has outlined. What may explain wage increases is not
>tight labor market but investment boom from lower interest rates as foreign
>money floods into the US. As suggested above, employers tend to pay higher
>wages when workers are equipped with expensive machinery.
Every journalistic report I've read, as well as the Fed's periodic beige books, say that the labor market is tight and good workers are hard to find. Employers are using every trick they can to avoid paying higher wages, but the U.S. labor market hasn't been this tight in 30 years.
Doug