The following charts are part of December 13's Bloomberg Economics Brief. The top chart is Bloomberg's Economic Surprise Index. As you can probably notice, the labor market has been surprising significantly to the upside lately. On the bottom, is changes in nominal wages for the month of November by selected industry. The red line represents the Fed's symmetrical target for inflation while the yellow highlight indicates value of the year-over-year percent change in the PCE deflator. 
While wage growth leaves lots to be desired, all but two industries, utilities and Leisure & Hospitality, showed wage increases in excess of PCE deflator increases. This is good news, these are real wage increases and more evidence of labor market tightening, even if very marginal. This is my 3d post in 2 weeks about this and you better get used to them, because there's probably going to be a lot more of them. The tide is changing, and labor is on its way up!
Previously:
2013-12-12 -- More on labor bargaining power
2013-12-05 -- Profit margins, tax receipts, and labor demand curves
The economic indicators are very expected recently. The graphs show the absence of the wage growth with the hardening of working conditions.
ReplyDeleteThese indicators only indicate that the work in recent years is very small
ReplyDelete