As the unemployment rate has fallen in recent months and the economy has roared, one central question has bedeviled the American job market: Where is the wage growth?
New data on Friday suggested an answer: It is here, and it is now
Average hourly earnings jumped 2.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Friday, the latest sign that the long, slow economic recovery is at last reaching Americans’ pocketbooks. Separate data released earlier this week showed that private-sector wages and salaries rose 2.8 percent in the final three months of 2017 compared with a year earlier, the fastest growth since the recession.
