Many businesses reported boosting wages in the most recent quarter, even as they express pessimism about economic growth in the near future.
For the first time in more than a decade, nearly half of the business leaders polled in a quarterly survey conducted by the National Association for Business Economics reported raising pay for their workforce in the past quarter. And even more — 58 percent — said they expect wages at their firms to rise in the next quarter.
And yet, the survey of 148 members of the association revealed higher-than-average rates of pessimism about the economy as a whole.
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For the first time in three years, for instance, at least a quarter of respondents said they expected the economy to grow by 2 percent or less in the next year.
While 28 percent said they expected profit margins to increase during the first quarter of 2016, 52 percent expect no change and 19 percent expect a profits to decline.
It's not clear what is driving the rise in wages, since only 30 percent of firms surveyed reported shortages in skilled labor. That's a lower percentage than in recent surveys.
"Fewer panelists than in the past three surveys report difficulty filling open positions, and shortages of skilled labor are less prevalent among respondents' firms than in the two previous surveys," said Patricia Jankowski, the survey chair for NABE.
Fifteen percent of respondents reported that employment will likely decline at their firms in the next quarter, the highest percentage reporting that type of bad news since that question was added to the survey a year-and-a-half ago.
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