Wage Growth Looks Great, Especially for Managers, Wall Street Traders

Workers’ wages grew in the past year at the fastest rate since the recession ended. Who took home the biggest increases? Managers.

Wages for private-sector employees increased 2.9% in January from a year earlier, the strongest annual increase since June 2009, according to the Labor Department’s latest jobs report. Nonsupervisors, about 82% of the workforce, saw a smaller increase just modestly above the pace of inflation.

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Still, the best wage gains last year came in some of the highest- and the lowest-​paid industries. Wall Street brokers and others in the financial-services sector received the largest pay increase among major industries. That’s the case even though Labor Department figures count only hourly base pay, and exclude bonuses and other perks.

On the other end of the spectrum, hourly wages in hospitality–the lowest paying field that includes restaurant workers–also recorded among the best increases. That gain at least partially reflects rising minimum wages in many states.

Evidence of a pickup in wages has been emerging in other measures, including the robust employment-cost index, a separate Labor Department ​measure released earlier this week. The report showed a 2.8% rise in wages for private-sector workers in the fourth quarter from a year earlier​.

But the purchasing power of workers’ paychecks is growing much more slowly than three years ago, when consumer prices were barely rising. Adjusting for those price changes, earnings among nonsupervisory employees​ in December, the most recent month for inflation data, barely advanced from a year earlier.

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from Real Time Economics http://ift.tt/2nFNNma