A measure of 12-month wage growth constructed here at the Atlanta Fed increased by 3.3 percent in April. This rate is up from 3.1 percent in March and at its highest level since March 2009 (see the chart).
As mentioned in an earlier macroblog post, this measure behaves broadly like the wage and salary component of the Employment Cost index (ECI). The ECI data pertain to the last month in the quarter and are published with about a four-week lag. In contrast, the Atlanta Fed measure uses individuals' hourly wage data, 12 months apart, from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The data come from publicly available CPS microdata produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and are typically released two or three weeks after the monthly BLS labor report.
Timeliness is one thing, but is it useful? It turns out there is a relatively strong correlation between this wage growth measure and the employment rate (100 minus the unemployment rate) lagged by 12 months (see the chart).
At least in terms of this measure of wage growth, it seems that improvement in labor utilization is translating into rising wage growth. This development is something our boss, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, has been looking for. We expect to be able to update this wage growth measure with the May CPS data in a few weeks.
By John Robertson, a senior policy adviser in the Atlanta Fed’s research department