To reverse a ‘low-growth’ future the wages of ordinary workers have to rise
The economic fundamentals will remain perilous if low- and middle-income workers continue to endure poor pay
The US economy ended 2015 with improvement in the labour market. Jobs grew by 284,000 each month on average in the last quarter and if you squint pretty hard at the data you can see a mild acceleration in the pace of nominal wage growth.
There will be plenty who will claim this justifies the Federal Reserve's decisions to raise short-term interest rates for the first time since 2007, and who will argue further that the economic concerns raised by the great recession and its aftermath can now be reshelved. They would then conclude that the focus can return to policy perennials like the need to reduce deficits and ensure that wage and price inflation do not spiral out of control.
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