美国国家公共电台 NPR Wages Are Increasing, But What's Behind It?

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It's taken years, but in 2016, wages finally started to go up. NPR's Yuki Noguchi explains.

YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE 1: The Great Recession ended seven and a half years ago, and job gains have been steady since. But the greater demand for workers is only starting to increase pay.

MICHAEL STRAIN: The mystery has been that we've seen a decline in the unemployment rate, but we haven't seen the kind of increases in wage growth that we would expect.

NOGUCHI: Michael Strain is director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He speculates that, all this time, employers figured they didn't have to increase wages.

STRAIN: A lot of people have left the workforce 2 and are no longer exerting upward pressure on the unemployment rate because they're not actively 3 looking for work. But businesses kind of have the sense that they're out there, they are a pool of available workers. So that has, I think, suppressed wage growth.

NOGUCHI: But wage growth did pick up this year, and economists 5 say there are reasons to believe it will continue to. The biggest reason is simply that the supply of labor 6 is declining. The unemployment rate is near a level economists say is close to a natural unemployment rate. Simply put, that means employers are having to shell out more to attract and retain workers. New state and local minimum wage laws are another reason wages are rising. Since 2014, 21 states in Washington, D.C., changed their minimum wage laws. Last month, voters approved initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington. AEI's Michael Strain says those rate increases have a ripple 7 effect beyond just the lowest paid workers. Many union contracts, for example, benchmark to the minimum wage.

STRAIN: There's no question minimum wage increases cause wage growth to accelerate. How much of that can be attributed to minimum wage increases, I think, is a more open question.

NOGUCHI: In Anggie Godoy's case, minimum wage hikes made a big difference. She started working as a McDonald's drive-thru cashier three years ago making $8 an hour. Since then, the Los Angeles City Council raised the minimum wage to $10.50. Without the city's new law, she says, she would only have seen a tiny increase.

ANGGIE GODOY: Working three years there, I only got a 10-cent raise.

NOGUCHI: Godoy, who participated in fast food worker strikes demanding a $15 hourly wage, says, as her wages increased, so did those who were in more senior positions.

GODOY: When the bottom rises, everybody is going to rise, too.

NOGUCHI: Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist 4 for online job site Glassdoor says Godoy is right.

ANDREW CHAMBERLAIN: Like dominoes up the pay scale, you see wage hikes all across the board.

NOGUCHI: But Chamberlain says minimum wage isn't the biggest factor. He says data suggest wages are growing fastest where demand is strongest. Pay for truck drivers, construction workers and machine operators is surging - not so in some white-collar jobs. Sales jobs and financial analysts 8, for example, are losing ground to technology.

CHAMBERLAIN: Clever coders are finding ways to program around them. Insurance agents today are largely being replaced by self-service insurance websites.

NOGUCHI: David Levine is CEO of the American Sustainable Business Council, a progressive advocacy group. He says increasing pay can be a way to address another labor market problem - low productivity growth.

DAVID LEVINE: With that retention 9, they're also getting employees that are more committed to the business. Therefore, productivity goes up.

NOGUCHI: Simply put, you pay more to get more.

Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.