For what feels like forever now, economists have been wondering and debating why pay isn't rising faster, given the low unemployment rate. Often you hear this described as the “wage puzzle.” But at least a few economists—most notably Adam Ozimek of Moodys Analytics and Ernie Tedeschi of Evercore ISI—have argued that there really isn't much of a mystery at all, if you look at the right data. Wages have been rising at roughly the rate you'd expect, given tightness of the labor market.
Wednesday offered a bit more data supporting their theory. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, tracked by the employment cost index, wages and salaries for workers in private industry had increased by 3.1 percent during that year that ended in September. (The ECI tracks what employers are paying for the same sorts of jobs over time.) That, on its own, is good news. Pay growth is accelerating. The economy is doing that cool thing where wages go up.
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