--- title: Hooray for 2016! There's a Good Chance You Will Get a Fat Raise This Year description: Based on a range of factors, many experts say that workers will see real wage growth in 2016. authors: - name: Ethan Wolff-Mann url: https://money.com/author/ethan-wolff-mann/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 160 covers: - Economy and Politics - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Education - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://x.com/ewolffmann former_staff: true published: '2016-01-04T16:05:32.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T09:36:07.000Z' section: Economy and Politics tags: - Economic Growth - salaries - wage increase word_count: 281 canonical: https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Labor Day rally](https://img.money.com/2016/01/gettyimages-487281778.jpg) Since the Great Recession, wage growth has remained [unimpressive to economists](http://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/), and downright depressing to workers trying to get by. But according to some experts, 2016 should be different: Multiple factors point to the likelihood of significant wage growth this year. Unemployment [levels have been dropping](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf), and the economy is doing well enough that the Federal Reserve has actually raised interest rates—for the first time since the iPhone came out—despite there not being any inflation to fight. The recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression was long and hard, but it hasn't been in vain. "We're at a turning point," Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi [told the *Minneapolis Star Tribune*](http://www.startribune.com/worker-salaries-are-poised-to-climb-this-year/363972021/). "I think it'll be a breakout year \[in 2016\] for wage growth." ***Read Next: How to Get the Raise You Deserve*** Payroll companies, Federal Reserve researchers, and analytics companies like Moody's have been reporting wage growth, according to the *Star Tribune,* with average pay for full-timers going up 4.1% between the third and fourth quarters of 2015. This is twice what the BLS reported, which has data that gets moderated by new and part-timers. Though jobs numbers and wage numbers are up, not everyone is so optimistic. In the same *Star Tribune* piece, Joe Biden's former chief economist echoed Thomas Piketty's notorious concerns that the labor force's share of GDP has been dropping for decades and that there's a larger pool of unemployed workers, all factors that could mute wage growth. And, of course, it's hard to ignore the fact that the U.S. is six years into the recovery, and economic cycles since 1945 have averaged around seven years. As JP Morgan predicted recently, there's [probably a recession coming](https://money.com/jp-morgan-recession-prediction/). ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Economy", "item": "https://money.com/economy/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Hooray for 2016! There's a Good Chance You Will Get a Fat Raise This Year" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/", "name": "Hooray for 2016! There's a Good Chance You Will Get a Fat Raise This Year", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-01-04T16:05:32.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T09:36:07.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Hooray for 2016! There's a Good Chance You Will Get a Fat Raise This Year", "articleSection": "Economy and Politics", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/01/gettyimages-487281778.jpg", "width": 3000, "height": 2061, "caption": "Labor Day rally" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ethan Wolff-Mann", "url": "https://money.com/author/ethan-wolff-mann/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/ethan-wolff-mann/#author", "sameAs": [ "https://x.com/ewolffmann" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2016-01-04T16:05:32.000Z", "description": "Based on a range of factors, many experts say that workers will see real wage growth in 2016.", "abstract": "Based on a range of factors, many experts say that workers will see real wage growth in 2016.", "@id": "https://money.com/2016-wage-increase-economy/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-04-16T09:36:07.000Z", "wordCount": 281, "keywords": [ "Economic Growth", "salaries", "wage increase" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Political economy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Economy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy" ] } ] } ] } ```