Businesses in trucking, construction, healthcare and in other segments have been complaining about expanding skills shortages. Workers with the right sets of experience are difficult to find, industry leaders claim, driving up costs and inefficiency. With the nation’s unemployment rate now down to five point one percent, incomes should be climbing faster.
Many economists had predicted that this would be the year that wage inflation began to become apparent. It hasn’t happened. As pointed out by writer Neil Irwin, average hourly earnings for all private sector workers were up by two point two percent in August from a year earlier according to data released earlier this month.
That represents a rate of wage growth similar to what it has been for several years. In fact, there has been little to no evidence of acceleration in pay as twenty fifteen has progressed. Other data point to the same conclusion. Employment compensation costs, which include both wage and benefit costs, are up about 2 percent over the past year. If it weren’t for surprisingly low inflation, due in part to a collapse in oil prices, real wage growth would be even softer.
