While one of the much trumpeted highlights of today's jobs report was the 0.5% jump in average hourly earnings, the reality as even Goldman's Jan Hatzius is quick to note, is that on an annual basis, wage growth is still stuck near the lowest levels recorded since the Great Financial Crisis.
[4]
So once again, for all those who scratch their heads trying to explain why this wage erosion continues despite the "best efforts" of the Fed (to make billionaires into trillioinaires), here is a simple explanation: in January the number of waiter and bartenders rose by 35K to 10.946 million. On the other hands, that one job category that once made America a great country and the dollar the global reserve, manufacturing, rose by just 22K to 12,330K, the lowest monthly increase since November.
And in context, as the chart below shows, the difference between America's manufacturing workers and waiters has dropped to a record low of just 1.387 million. The same difference was 11.3 million on January 31, 1990.
[5]
