Just as everyone’s finished replacing their “high unemployment” talking points with “no wage growth” talking points, it looks like wage growth throughout the economy has finally picked up.
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Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest chart on inflation-adjusted annual earnings growth, which you can see has accelerated a lot since last winter:
Actual incomes are doing even better than this because a larger share of people are working and the average workweek has increased slightly.
Some of the increase is coming on the cost of living side (cheaper gasoline) rather than on bosses giving out nominal raises. But the higher pay is real. And one intriguing subplot in it is that wages are actually growing faster for “production and non-supervisory employees” than they are for “all employees.” Which is to say that pay for rank-and-file workers is growing faster than pay for managers — a rare example of a trend toward greater economic equality.
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