BREAKING: WAGES JUMP TO HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE 2009

       American economy got a whole lot better in January. About 200,000 jobs were created, higher than the 180,000 expected. The unemployment rate held at 4.1 percent, an 18-year low. Best of all, though, after decades of little to no wage growth for hourly workers, we saw a jump of nearly three percent, which is much higher than expected.

​       “Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent from the prior month following an upwardly revised 0.4 percent gain,” Bloomberg reports. “The 2.9 advance from a year earlier — which partly reflected a downward revision to the January 2017 wage figure — compared with projections for a 2.6 percent increase. December’s gain was revised upward to 2.7 percent.”