At Angry Bear, my colleague-in-blogging pgl notes, with dismay, the discomfort some people discovered in this piece of news in yesterday's employment report (from the Wall Street Journal, page A3 of the weekend print edition):
... the average hourly wage jumped a larger-than-expected 0.5% to $16.61, a sign that competition for qualified workers is heating up. Compared with a year ago, the average hourly wage was up 3.8%, the largest year-on-year rise since August 2001.
I share some of pgl's dismay. In a long-ago post, I had this to say:
... hourly wages or earnings are an inadequate measure of labor compensation, primarily because they exclude nonwage forms of compensation -- health care benefits, employers' share of social security contributions, and the like. These forms of compensation are an increasingly important part of what workers receive from employers in exchange for the sweat of their brows.
Add to that the fact that the series is based on the wages of nonsupervisory production workers, a fairly narrow segment of the labor force.
pgl says:
I guess these folks can’t stand the possibility that real wages might one day recover.
To that I say amen, but will point out that wage increases in excess of productivity growth are not a good sign. So if you really must worry, feel free to fret about first quarter unit labor costs.
UPDATE: As he promised (in the comment section below), The Nattering Naybob jumps into the fray, rounding up more commentary from blogland, and weighing-in with his own musical case for why you really should be concerned. Highly recommended.