Will McGrew sends us to new EPI employee and friend of Equitable Growth Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: The U.S. Job Market Doesn’t Feel so Hot Despite the Low Unemployment Rate: "Workers need the economy to stay hot so they can begin to see the dividends of high growth.... There are several reasons a purportedly booming U.S. economy doesn’t feel like much of a boon to millions of American workers, chief among them the startling lack of wage growth many have experienced over the past four decades.... A business- and bank-friendly mindset at the Federal Reserve, whose top officials spend a lot more time with their high-flying Wall Street and industry contacts than with workers and community leaders, deepens this imbalance.... Because of the Fed’s proximity to its business contacts, it tends to think of workers as labor costs (not investments in human capital) and wages as inflation (not improvements in standards of living). This colors the Fed’s definition of 'full employment', making policy makers easily swayed by dubious claims from business executives about chronic labor shortages—made without any contention about why wages are not rising on a sustained basis...
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