Today's Jobs Report Marks a 'Sea Change' for the U.S. Labor Market

The January jobs report isn't just a single piece of good news. It marks a sea change in the labor market in which the middle class and working class are finally starting to get ahead. Even before the January data came out, Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist of JPMorgan Chase, picked up on the trend in a research note titled, "A little bit less of these workingman's blues." (That may be a musical reference to Merle Haggard's Workin' Man Blues, or Bob Dylan's Workingman's Blues #2, or maybe The Simpsons' "Lost Verizon" episode.)

Wrote Feroli on Feb. 6: "Cyclical forces are beginning to tilt the growth in purchasing power toward the lower end of the income distribution. This is in contrast to earlier in the cycle, when many of those same forces were tilting the skew in consumer spending toward the upper end of the income distribution." Added Feroli: "Historically, as the labor market tightens the income distribution compresses, and wage growth tends to be the strongest at the lower end of the scale."