Economic Indicators

News from EPI Job Growth Continues Apace, but Wage Growth is Nowhere to be Seen

Today’s jobs report showed the economy added a solid 295,000 jobs in February—marking the twelfth straight month that job growth has been more than 200,000. Taking into account growth in the labor force, at this rate we will return to pre-recession labor market conditions by spring of 2017.

At the same time, wage growth continues to be sluggish, providing strong evidence that despite a year of solid job growth there is still ample slack in the labor market. Private sector hourly wages are up only 2.0 percent over the year. Wages need to grow faster, and for a longer time, before we can say the economy is truly working for working people and before the Federal Reserve should think about tapping the brakes.


See more work by Elise Gould