Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The Labor Theory of the Market Rout

Was the rout in the stock market caused by rising wages? That's one theory. A Labor Department report of rising U.S. wages last week fed market inflation fears and may have kicked off the market's swoon. But a deeper look at that report raises questions about whether wages really are rising in such threatening ways.

Average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers increased 2.9 percent in January from a year earlier, the best gain since June 2009. But the gains aren’t very widespread. A separate gauge showed that wages for nonsupervisory workers, who account for around 80 percent of employment, rose just 2.4 percent for the year ended January, in the range that’s prevailed for several years.

This isn’t the first time managerial workers have seen a big uptick in monthly pay. Wages for this group rose 1.2 percent last February and 1 percent last July, pushing overall wages up 0.3 percent in both months, But that pace wasn’t sustained in the following months.

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