A tightening labor market might finally be producing pay raises for American workers, delivering one of the key missing ingredients in the expansion.
The Labor Department reported Friday that hourly earnings for private-sector workers posted their biggest annual increase in January since June 2009, when the last recession ended, rising 2.9% from a year earlier.
. . . The latest evidence of a pay pickup came in the government’s closely watched monthly jobs report, which also showed that nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 200,000 in January, more than economists had expected. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, its lowest level since December 2000, for the fourth straight month.
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