For all the talk about "noisy inflation" this and "rising prices are good for the economy" that, what the Fed's cheerleading squad continues to ignore is the one most important inflation the US economy needs in order to actually have a sustainable recovery instead of centrally-planned stagflation: wage inflation.
So while bullish pundits keep referring to some mythical CEO survey promising wage will increase any day now, just not today, the BLS released its most recent real wage (adjusted for inflation) report moments ago, [5]showing that not only did the average real hourly wage remain flat for the second month in a row at $10.29, the lowest level since September 2013, but posted the first annual decline since October 2012.
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And a longer-term chart showing where real average wages have gone in the past five years (spoiler alert: nowhere).
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In short: any minute now on those rising wages... Just not right now.
