Is Wage Growth a Problem?
Josh Bivens:
Is Wage Growth the Problem or the Solution?, by Josh Bivens, WSJ Think Tank: Lots of talk has percolated recently about whether a sudden burst of rapid wage growth would force the Fed’s hand in pulling back monetary stimulus... Some who, like me, do not see any evidence of an imminent wage take-off have argued that the Fed should wait for some evidence of wage inflation before hitting the brakes.
These arguments essentially treat a pickup of wage growth as a problem to be guarded against. But the most conspicuous failure in the U.S. economy over the past generation, by far, has been too slow wage growth for the vast majority of American workers. ...
So one part of the “how much slack” debate that too often goes unaddressed is that there is not only a lack of evidence that wages are about to start growing rapidly but also that it wouldn’t be a big problem if they did. In fact, it would be a good thing.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Tuesday, July 8, 2014 at 12:33 AM in Economics, Income Distribution, Inflation, Monetary Policy |
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