Real Wages Accelerating

As the U.S. economy begins to stabilize, real wages are accelerating according to a new report released today by theADP Research Institute. The new ADP Workforce Vitality Report reveals deep insights into the state of the U.S. labor market on metrics such as wage growth, job turnover rates and hours worked by geography, industry, wage level and employee demographics.

In the leisure and hospitality industry, the hourly wage for workers who stayed in their current jobs increased by 0.7% in Q3 vs. Q2 2014. Those who switched jobs had an hourly wage increase of 7.4% — showing a large gap in compensation growth between job switchers and holders.

Other key findings related to wage growth:

• Wages grew nationally in Q3 2014, but the fastest growth in real hourly wage has been among the Millennials (those born 1980 to the early 2000s). However, Generation X and the Baby Boomers caught up in Q3 2014.
• Employees at small businesses (<50 employees) have higher wage growth than larger companies.
• Wage disparity between men and women is highest when looking at job switchers (men with 5.7 percent versus women with 4.6 percent), but the data doesn’t indicate that the gender compensation gap is disappearing anytime soon.
• It doesn’t pay to be a loyal employee job switchers are experiencing much faster wage growth (5.3 percent) than job holders (0.8 percent).
• Low-wage workers (<$20K) have the highest turnover rate (8.6 percent) of any wage tier; and low-wage jobs switchers are experiencing the highest rate of wage growth at nearly 10 percent.