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Slight Pick-Up in Wage Growth Likely, Says Bloomberg Index
January 20, 2012 2:04 am
Bloomberg BNA’s final fourth quarter Wage Trend Indicator™ (WTI). The forward-looking index rose in the fourth quarter for the sixth straight time, to 98.52 (second quarter 1976 = 100) from 98.36 in the third quarter.
"Barring any major shocks to the U.S. economy, we expect modest acceleration in wage growth during the course of 2012," economist Kathryn Kobe, a consultant who maintains and helped develop Bloomberg BNA's WTI database, said.
Annual gains for private sector workers are expected to improve in 2012 from the 1.7 percent increase reported by the Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2011, but are unlikely to exceed 2.0 percent, as measured by the employment cost index (ECI).
Reflecting recent labor market conditions, four of the WTI's seven components made positive contributions to the final fourth quarter reading, while three factors were negative. Over its history, the WTI has predicted a turning point in wage trends six to nine months before the trends are apparent in the ECI.
Of the WTI's seven components, the four positive contributors to the final fourth quarter reading were job losers as a share of the labor force, reported by DOL; forecasters' expectations for the rate of inflation, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and the share of employers planning to hire production and service workers in the coming months and the proportion of employers reporting difficulty in filling professional and technical jobs, both tracked by BNA's quarterly employment outlook survey. The negative factors were the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, both reported by DOL, and industrial production, measured by the Federal Reserve Board.
"Barring any major shocks to the U.S. economy, we expect modest acceleration in wage growth during the course of 2012," economist Kathryn Kobe, a consultant who maintains and helped develop Bloomberg BNA's WTI database, said.
Annual gains for private sector workers are expected to improve in 2012 from the 1.7 percent increase reported by the Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2011, but are unlikely to exceed 2.0 percent, as measured by the employment cost index (ECI).
Reflecting recent labor market conditions, four of the WTI's seven components made positive contributions to the final fourth quarter reading, while three factors were negative. Over its history, the WTI has predicted a turning point in wage trends six to nine months before the trends are apparent in the ECI.
Of the WTI's seven components, the four positive contributors to the final fourth quarter reading were job losers as a share of the labor force, reported by DOL; forecasters' expectations for the rate of inflation, compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and the share of employers planning to hire production and service workers in the coming months and the proportion of employers reporting difficulty in filling professional and technical jobs, both tracked by BNA's quarterly employment outlook survey. The negative factors were the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, both reported by DOL, and industrial production, measured by the Federal Reserve Board.
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