Fewest Americans Earning Poverty-Level Wages

A record-low 11.4 percent of U.S. workers earned poverty-level wages last year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and that share is likely to fall further, said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank. With the unemployment rate for those with a college degree at 2.1 percent, “any incremental increase in jobs going forward will go to people with lower skills and wages,” he said. The labor market is at an inflection point, with wages “moving higher simply because there are today economy-wide more job openings than unemployed people.” In other words, expect average hourly earnings to move higher in Friday’s June payrolls report, with Deutsche Bank’s estimate of 2.8 percent growth year-over-year matching the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.