Part 3: How much (more) money we're making:
Bottom Line: In today's third story breaking down the employment report from Friday we'll explore real incomes. The average hourly wage for all Americans is currently $26.14. Here are a couple of highlights:
- +5 cents per hour from February
- +2.7% year over year
This is a somewhat encouraging monthly take on how much more money we're making. Despite the confounding jobs growth number that conflicts with the labor participation rate and the unemployment rate - we did see that all demographics had declining real unemployment rates and increased earnings. This is continuing to indicate that the quality of many jobs was rather strong. Ironically, I'm increasingly seeing a narrative that the area of job loss (retail) is being more than offset by higher quality/paying jobs. That would appear to be the biggest driver of wage growth.
Now what we still don't have is the 3%+ target we haven't had in a decade. With about 70% of the US economic growth coming from consumer spending, we need to see real incomes improve by 3%+ to expect 3%+ economic growth which hasn't occurred since 2005. If we can get one more month with a similar improvement - we could be there. It's an exciting thought that has me crossing my fingers. Until next month...