Unemployment & Wages

Well, the bad news is that almost 600,000 Americans lost their jobs in January. The unemployment rate is now 7.6%, a 16 year high.

The good news is that average hourly wages has increased to $18.46, up 5 cents.

My guess is that people are really not being paid more. My guess is that most of these 600,000 Americans made less, far less, than the $18.41 average wage. Thus wages are not really increasing but fewer poor people are employted to drag the average down.