Where's My Raise?

By Cardiff Garcia,

Stacey Vanek Smith

Published December 8, 2017 at 11:36 AM PST

NPR

The big monthly jobs report came out today. The good news? Lots of people have jobs. The bad news? Raises are hard to come by.

Today's Indicator is 2.5 percent. That's how much average hourly earnings grew over the past year. After you take inflation into account, that's pretty weak --much less than you'd expect given how low the unemployment rate is. Employers are are having to compete for increasingly scarce workers, so why aren't they offering more money? On today's show: Three theories for why wages are rising so slowly.

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Cardiff Garcia

Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.

See stories by Cardiff Garcia

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith