“Tight labor markets have raised concerns about the role of labor costs in persistently high inflation readings. Analysis shows that higher labor costs are passed along to customers in the form of higher nonhousing services prices, however the effect on overall inflation is very small. Labor-cost growth has no meaningful effect on goods or housing services inflation. Overall, labor-cost growth is responsible for only about 0.1 percentage point of recent core PCE inflation.”
Fascinating research from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, pondering the impact of wage gains on inflation.
Counterintuitively, they found that rising wages have a minimal impact on inflation. How little? The study found that a “1% point increase in labor costs causes only a 0.15% rise in core PCE inflation” over four years – an increase of less than 0.04% annually.