Five signs that conditions are getting better for US workers

Sign #1: JPMorgan Chase is raising wages

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest American bank, announced in a New York Times op-ed today that the bank is giving thousands of its employees a raise.

Our minimum salary for American employees today is $10.15 an hour (plus meaningful benefits, which I’ll explain later), almost $3 above the current national minimum wage. Over the next three years, we will raise the minimum pay for 18,000 employees to between $12 and $16.50 an hour for full-time, part-time and new employees, depending on geographic and market factors.

Sign #2: Starbucks is raising wage rates

Starbucks announced a small wage increase yesterday — not much, but, yes a raise. And they already have a free tuition plan with Arizona State University.

Starbucks said Monday that it is preparing to give pay increases of at least 5 percent to all of its U.S. store workers and managers, a move aimed at shoring up the coffee giant’s ability to attract and retain employees in a steadily improving labor market.

In 2014, Starbucks debuted a program in which it covers tuition for full-time and part-time workers to get a college degree online from Arizona State University.

Sign #3: Walmart has raised wages

In February Walmart raised hourly wages for its employees — though not enough.

On Wednesday, Walmart announced that in mid-February, 1.2 million employees at its U.S. stores will be getting a small raise. Hourly wages for full-time Walmart employees will increase from an average of $13 to $13.38 (and for part-time employees, the average wage will go from $10 to $10.58.) Unfortunately, that’s still lower than the average for U.S. retail workers, which according to the Labor Department is $14.95.

Sign #4: Quit rates are up

Workers are job-hopping more — they are not scared to quit because they are confident of finding a better paying job elsewhere.

the share of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs — what economists refer to as the “quits rate” — has more or less returned to pre-recession levels. This too bodes well for wage hikes, since job-hopping is one of the most important ways that workers, especially young workers, obtain raises.

Sign #5: It takes longer to fill vacancies

Employers are finding that it takes longer to fill job vacancies because qualified workers not readily available as in the recent past.

The amount of time it takes an employer to fill a vacancy, for example, is now 29.3 working days, according to the DHI-DFH Mean Vacancy Duration Measure. That’s an all-time high. It means that firms are having trouble finding the workers they need to fill open slots, which could lead to bidding wars to recruit or poach the few qualified workers available.

All these indicators taken together reflect a strengthening job market for US workers, an encouraging sign for the US economy.