One of the economy’s bright spots is the job market — and it may be even brighter than it seems. Not only are there more jobs (1.3 million so far in 2016), but they may be better-paying,according to a new analysis by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Fed economists report that middle-wage workers — earning roughly $30,000 to $60,000 — represent the fastest growing segment of the labor market. By contrast, earlier in the recovery, low-wage and high-wage jobs dominated employment increases.
The labor market was supposedly becoming economically “polarized,” just as society was becoming politically polarized. Now, the new analysis suggests that the labor-market polarization “may have peaked, and middle-wage jobs could be ready for a renaissance,” as my Post colleague Ylan Q. Mui wrote in a nice blog post on the New York Fed study.
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