Part 3: How much (more) money we're making
Bottom Line: In today's third story breaking down the employment report we'll explore real incomes. The average hourly wage for all Americans is currently $26.82 and with an average work week of 34.5 hours the average income is now $48,115 (an improvement of $125 from a month ago). Here are the highlights:
+8 cents per hour (month over month)
+2.7% year over year
+3.6% on an annualized basis (looking forward)
There's lots of good stuff here and this is the biggest silver lining within the lackluster government report. These are some of the big takeaways...
30,000 more jobs than March of 2017 and 37k better than the ten-year average for March
Over 200k average jobs per month for the first quarter of 2018 (best in five years)
New all-time low adjusted black unemployment rate
Solid wage growth
I suspect that once again we'll have massive upward revisions for job growth by the time it's all said and done but even without those revisions there's enough here to show that under that meh headline number a lot of good stuff was still happening last month. My biggest near-term concern is whether there's a chilling impact on job growth in April due to the tariff talk and uncertainty about where it's all going. Many of the fastest growing sectors for job growth are right in cross hairs of potential impacts from the threats and already imposed Chinese tariffs.
Until next month...