Steven Blitz, chief U.S. Economist at TS Lombard, points out that it’s important to look at wage-growth in lower-paying industries. Here are his reflections on wages, via e-mailed comments:

“Wage gains for non-supervisory workers is less headline worthy, being 2.4% Y/Y, but the underlying trend is still up. Greater growth in lower wage industries remains the underpinning of the jobs market, about 50% of total private sector jobs gain in January. The diffusion indexes pared back a bit, suggesting firms are becoming a little less aggressive in adding payroll. This all fits with our outlook for a year when, on the margin, capital rather than labor is added to expand output. There were strong gains in construction employment and average hourly wage gains in this sector are up 2.9%Y/Y and 3.6% in the past three months, on an annualized basis. In all, a strong enough report with just enough quirks (drop in hours, the 15,000 increase in apparel store employment) to give pessimists some factors to grab onto.”