Booming -- and Tightening -- Job Market Has Predictable Effect: Workers Are Getting Their First Legitimate Raises in Decades

Suppy/demand -- how does it work?

The right has a split between people who think that worker's wages should be driven down as low as possible, forever, using off-shoring for plants that can be moved, and imported cheaper laborers for those that can't be moved, and people who think that maybe conservatism does include the idea of workers increasing in prosperity as well.

And some of us think that driving down workers' wages forever is politically dangerous and may lead to socialism. You can't frustrate people forever without them taking action, even if it is counterproductive.

But whatever, invade the world, invite the world, the only thing that conservatism should care about is the welfare of corporations, even as more and more corporations are now Citizens of the World not even owing a nominal allegiance to the United States.

US employers are stepping on the accelerator -- and that's lifting average salaries and fueling record raises across many sectors. For the typical American worker, pay increases could soon surge past 4 percent or 5 percent for the year, according to labor experts.

By any stretch, the number crunchers say, it's a big jump to catch up on the anemic salary growth over the past 10 years, thanks to the law of supply and demand and a booming economy. Job openings recently surpassed the number of unemployed by 1.3 million. And it's starting to trigger bottlenecks.

...

Average hourly earnings in the private sector have risen by 3.2 percent in the past year. By Frick's account, while global forces such as outsourcing could still hold back wage increases, by as early as next year the US could potentially see wages rise an average of 4.5 percent -- similar to the peak of the 2000s' expansion -- or even as much as 5.5 percent, as happened at the peak of the 1990 to 2001 expansion.

Robert Johnson, chairman and CEO at Economic Index Associates, is convinced the US economy will see strong wage growth, possibly north of 4 percent over the coming months and next few years. Johnson attributes this to productivity gains and labor shortages.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:56 PM

| Access Comments