Is It Hard to Get Good Help?

As the labor market has tightened, many of us have looked to trends in wage growth to see evidence that we could be hitting full employment. While the tighter labor market has led to gains for those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution, it has not led to a general acceleration in wage growth. The year-over-year increase in the average hourly wage was just 2.5 percent for November, roughly the same as it has been for the last two years.

In spite of the weak wage growth, news outle...