Wages are flat and GDP is < 3%. Something doesn’t add up.
Must be bad there on the East coast. Not so much inland. Raises and bonuses are becoming common here. Must be East coast high tax states dragging the stats down.
Foxconn (state of the art flat panels) in Racine Wi, when the 200,000 sq ft plant is finished later this year, will be hiring 13,500 with average wage around $55K. With completion they may build a second plant nearby (Apple building plant nearby) to go with the announced Madison plant.
None of that counts all the new roads and freeway lane, new housing, stores etc just for the new Foxconn hires. Then there all the suppliers who will build nearby and so on.
At 2.9% unemployment many hires will have to dome from other states - Wi just does not have enough people to supply the demand. So tight, whatever your statistics say - well you know what they say about those numerical manipulations.