Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, September 11, 2026
David Kelly from JPMorgan Asset Management observes that despite difficulties in finding workers, year-over-year wage growth is at its lowest since May 2021. He attributes this to an asymmetric power structure in the labor market, where 94% of private sector workers are non-unionized and lack significant bargaining power for pay increases.
“This is the lowest year-over-year wage number we've seen since May of 2021. It is not a secret that you can't actually find good help. But yet, workers, we have a very asymmetric power structure in Europe. The labor market, American workers find it very hard to get a pay increase. And if they haven't been able to get a pay increase up until now, I don't see why they're going to be able to get a pay increase going forward.”
“94% of American private sector workers are not members of a union. They really don't have that much bargaining power. We're not seeing that wage growth.”