DCA Limited Hong Kong Says It Is All True

CENTRAL, Hong Kong - Feb. 20, 2018 - PRLog -- Even as the economy continued its modest recovery in recent years, there was one critical missing element: wages. Despite unemployment declines, wage gains remained tame.

Almost half — 48% — of the NABE survey of 119 of its member companies said that their wage and salary packages had increased during the last three months, while none reported reducing pay for workers.

That  difference of 48 percentage points is the highest since January 2000 and third-highest since the survey started in 1982.

It doesn't stop there, however. Over the next three months, "the (index) for expected wage costs increased from 46 in the October survey to 58 in January — the highest level since
this question was added to the survey in April 2014," the NABE survey said.

So, in short, wages are starting to raise fast, a trend that is expected to continue, as companies invest more, add jobs and look for qualified workers to do them.

The widely followed tally by Americans for Tax Reform of companies either raising pay or handing out big bonuses following December's tax cuts now stands at 275 — and rising.

Companies as diverse as Apple and Wal-Mart are adding to the pay packets of their workers, in some cases making pending minimum-wage hikes moot, as in the case of Wal-Mart. Some three million workers have already seen a hike in pay, a bonus or more money added to their 401(k), the first sweet fruit of the tax cuts.

Why are companies doing it? Not to be nice. No, the real reason is that, in what's expected to be a fast-growing economy, they want to retain their best workers.

But they're not only raising pay, they're also investing in their workers. In the NABE survey, companies that have trouble hiring enough qualified workers say they're "training (workers) internally" (31% of respondents) and "raising pay" (29%) in response to market pressures.

Both are great news for American workers, who will emerge from this expansion with higher pay, more skills and, hopefully, better job security than following the last two recessions.

And despite fears of a robotized army taking over America's workforce, just 22% of the companies reported that they had "invested in automation" to make up for a lack in skilled workers.

Since the 2008-2009 recession, wage growth for workers has been stuck at 2.5% or lower — compared to a 3%-plus growth rate for wages before the financial crisis.

It's not surprising this should be so: The economy failed to grow by more than 3% in any year during the Obama era, despite massive stimulus of nearly a trillion dollars and record-low zero-percent interest rates engineered by a desperate Fed.

The average annualized growth of the Obama years was actually less than 2%, the worst performance since the Great Depression.

This year, if the NABE survey is right, that dismal performance may be a thing of the past.

Some 16% of survey participants predicted growth of over 3.1% this year. That's up sharply from just last July, when only 2% thought growth would exceed 3.1%

https://www.dca-hk.com

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