U.S. Wage Acceleration Looks Real, at Least in Certain Sectors

Wages in the U.S. increased 2.9 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the strongest advance of the expansion so far. And despite some caveats, the pickup looks like it might be durable -- at least in certain key sectors of the economy.

There were two things to consider when looking at the figure. For starters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes two main series on average hourly earnings -- one for all private-sector nonfarm employees, and the other for only production and nonsupervisory workers. The former registered a big acceleration in wages, while the latter didn’t. Second, average weekly hours worked for all employees slumped, which could have artificially boosted the hourly earnings figure for that series.