Wage gains the big story in non-farm payrolls
The US dollar is climbing after non-farm payrolls, largely due to rises in wages. That's the right reaction, in my opinion, especially with unemployment falling too.
The caveat on the wage data is that it's skewed to the top earnings.
Rounded, the overall rise in wages was 0.48% (reported as 0.5%) but wages for production and nonsupervisory employees was just 0.28%, which was below expectations.
The wage rise was skewed higher by supervisory employees and financial services (+10.1%). The skew was likely end-of-year bonuses. The numbers are supposed to be seasonally-adjusted for that but it's a tough one to account for.
Arguing that it's some kind of one-off is the similarly between last year's Dec-Jan pattern in wages and this year.
