This is the third article in our 10 part series reporting on contract settlement trends. This article highlights some of the recent economic developments most likely to impact your negotiations outlook.
This is the second part of our 10 part Fall 2016 wage series. In this article we take a look at recent contract settlements and examine how those trends vary from recent previous years. Our view of 2015 and 2016 settlements and what we have so far from 2017 indicates that the Washington State public sector wages are a mirror of national wage stagnation. We see some wage increases with little substantial “real wage” growth (as measured once controlled for inflation). Whether a growing economy eventually will accelerate these is something we’ll discuss later in this series.
The latest inflation reports show CPI on the rise. In the last two month reporting period the Seattle CPI (W) has jumped from 2.0% to 2.6% and the All-Cities (W) has doubled from 0.7% to 1.4%.
As we recently wrote, CPI Edging Up , the Seattle CPI continues to far outpace the All-Cities Index. The latest report has the Seattle Index at 2.6%, far outpacing the 0.8% All Cities Index. This probably should not be too surprising giving the robust Seattle economy which is far outpacing the most modest economic growth occurring elsewhere. The economic growth is no doubt placing additional pressures on local prices.
The latest release of CPI shows that it is continue to climb, edging up enough that it may also bump up contract settlements. The April CPI was released this past week showing the Seattle CPI-W climbing to 2.6. The All-Cities-W index, although also climbing, continues to significantly lag behind at 0.8. This chart reveals the trend line in those two indices over the past 12 months.
In the last issue we discussed whether – and to what extent — population influenced a jurisdiction's relative wage ranking. In this article we discussed to what extent assessed valuation influences that ranking.
Earlier in the wage series we discussed State wage rankings for the various public safety classifications. In the next part of the wage series we run our series of articles on factors that might influence or explain, at least in part, those wage rankings, with updated 2015 wage rankings.
In the last blog article we addressed the recent .5% gap between the “U” and “W” indices. We discussed whether over time there was a significant difference between the CPI-W and the CPI-U, explaining that there was not.
In our July 24th blog article we reported on the June CPI and noted the wide spread between the “U” and “W” inflation indices and promised to provide an explanation as to the differences in these inflation measures. We cover that in today’s report.
This is part of our continued series on Washington public safety employee wages. In this issue we report on wage rankings for 911 dispatchers and police records clerks.
