Wages climbed at a rapid pace in the year through March, another sign that labor shortages are prodding employers to increase wages to retain and attract workers.
Wages have picked up by 5.6 percent over the past year, a far quicker pace than the 2 to 3 percent annual pay gains that were typical during the 2010s. Compared to the prior month, wages rose 0.4 percent.
Quickly climbing pay is a sign that employers are competing for a finite pool of workers. There are roughly 1.8 job openings for every unemployed worker, and companies complain of struggling to hire across a range of skill sets and industries.
Over the past year, pay has picked up most markedly for workers in the leisure and hospitality industry, climbing by 14.9 percent, while workers in transportation and warehousing have also received double-digit pay gains. Those figures are for workers who are not supervisors.
Between February and March, wages climbed markedly in leisure and hospitality once again, while workers in the financial and durable goods industries also saw pay pick up sharply.
While rapid wage growth is a boon for many workers, it is complicated by — and raising concerns about — rapid inflation. Workers are finding that their paychecks, while bigger, no longer buy as much. At the same time, fast pay increases may be prodding some employers to raise prices as they try to pass higher labor costs along to their customers.
“The promise of wages moving up is a great thing,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said after the central bank’s decision to raise interest rates last month in a bid to cool off the economy. But the increases are “running at levels that are well above what would be consistent with 2 percent inflation, our goal, over time.”
With March’s figures, wages are increasing at an even faster rate over the year than they were when Mr. Powell made his remark.
