In the last quarter of 2022, the largest increase in employer-paid wages — a pay raise of 1.6% — was in the U.S. economy's information sector.
That was an increase from the previous quarter.
The increase in the employment-cost index, or ECI, which includes wages and benefits, was 1% in the fourth quarter and 5.1% for the year.
The Federal Reserve is worried that rising wages will fuel inflation, and the ECI is the best available measure of wages. The Fed is expected to raise its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 4.5% to 4.75% at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday. In March, the rate was raised in response to rising inflation. The Fed is going to deliver a quarter-point rate hike along with a last hawkish sting in the tail Many of the highest-paying jobs are seeing the biggest wage gains. In the financial services sector, wages are rising the fastest, showing a fourth-quarter rise of 1.4% compared to the previous quarter. The last quarter of 2022 showed a shift away from the growth, as the leisure and hospitality sector has been closely watched as an industry where wages have been growing at a rapid rate over the past two years, as the economy emerges from the damaging early stages of the coronaviruses epidemic. The Wages rose by only 0.9%, compared with a nearly 2% rate in each of the first three quarters of 2022. Public administration, except for public administration, was the sector with the slowest rise in wages, at 0.7%. Professional and business services, growing at a rate of 0.8%, was slightly ahead of that. There are nine supersectors that are compared, construction, manufacturing, trade, transportation and utilities, information, financial activities, professional and business services, education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and other services, except public administration. In the past two years, wages have accelerated while the employers' costs for wages have grown more or less consistently since the 2008-09 recession. The years following the onset of the Pandemic in early 2020 have seen accelerated growth. Wages by supersector sorted by the largest change in the latest quarter.