US employers are stepping on the accelerator — and that’s lifting average salaries and fueling record raises across many sectors. For the typical American worker, pay increases could soon surge past 4 percent or 5 percent for the year, according to labor experts.
By any stretch, the number crunchers say, it’s a big jump to catch up on the anemic salary growth over the past 10 years, thanks to the law of supply and demand and a booming economy. Job openings recently surpassed the number of unemployed by 1.3 million. And it’s starting to trigger bottlenecks.
For example, a trucker shortage — precipitated in part by a surge in factory orders — is forcing one company to grease the wheels with some of the industry’s largest payouts of as much as $3,100 in weekly take-home pay.
“You need a minimum of two years experience, and be qualified to drive in the 48 contiguous states,” an official for MB Global Logistics told The Post.
“It’s tough finding drivers. We had a load delivery for New York City from the Midwest for $7,000 gross — and one driver we asked just did not want to take it.”
Although the generous offer by Addison, Ill.-based, MG Global could have some come-ons and hidden expenses, labor experts aren’t surprised.
ZipRecruiter says hourly wages for truck drivers now range from $10 to nearly $40. And average trucker salaries have vaulted 30 percent in the past four years, according to trade group data.
But trucking is not the only route to the pot of gold.
“Sometime next year, the labor market in general will get tight, whereas now it’s only tight in certain industries,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
“Those include the health care sector, building trades, engineering and finance and the food industry. These industries are already seeing wage increases, and may see their wages rise more first.”
Average hourly earnings in the private sector have risen by 3.2 percent in the past year. By Frick’s account, while global forces such as outsourcing could still hold back wage increases, by as early as next year the US could potentially see wages rise an average of 4.5 percent — similar to the peak of the 2000s’ expansion — or even as much as 5.5 percent, as happened at the peak of the 1990 to 2001 expansion.
Robert Johnson, chairman and CEO at Economic Index Associates, is convinced the US economy will see strong wage growth, possibly north of 4 percent over the coming months and next few years. Johnson attributes this to productivity gains and labor shortages.
“My only caveat is that the trade dispute between the US and China is resolved and doesn’t escalate into a full-fledged trade war,” he said.
In the meantime, many careers today are beating the averages. For example, registered nurses, with a typical annual wage of $73,550, have seen salaries grow by 10 percent over four years; production managers, at $110,580, have seen similar growth. Some in the trades have seen their pay go through the roof.
“Wage growth for those that are great at what they do is only going to accelerate,” said James Phillip, CEO of JMJ Phillip Executive Search. “But if you’re in the middle pack of the workforce, you should continue to see mild wage growth because the market is so tight.”
Still, a recent Goldman Sachs report noted wages are on the upswing for lower-paid workers. Though it didn’t dissect the impact of minimum-wage mandates, it showed that wage growth “picked up sharply at the bottom half of the wage distribution, with considerably slower growth in the upper half.”
Frick says many workers have the inside track. “We are in, or approaching a high-velocity labor market where employers will start hiring and training new recruits, training and promoting existing employees — and raising wages to keep and attract workers,” he said.S