March jobs data points to ongoing ‘resistance from wages’

March’s jobs data reported an astounding 303,000 jobs added to the US economy, topping estimates of 214,000, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.8%. The Conference Board Chief Economist Dana Peterson and Invesco Global Market Strategist Brian Levitt join Yahoo Finance this morning to discuss the general consensus on the job print’s impact on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy, taking a closer look at wage growth data.

Levitt characterizes the jobs print as a typical “Goldilocks report” while viewing it as “all favorable news” here for the US economy.

“I’m certainly concerned about wages. I mean, wages are still well above the average we saw before the pre-pandemic, before the pandemic. Before that it was roughly just under 3%, now we’re still at 4%,” Peterson explains. “And so that’s going to place upward pressure on overall consumer inflation. The goods news is that housing inflation is slowing, but we’re still getting that resistance from wages.”