With Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve hoping and looking for any good news on higher prices and getting inflation back up to 2% or more, any aspect of pricing is being looked at closely. The Employment Cost Index is not helping Team Yellen in that search.

Friday’s report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that compensation costs for civilian workers was hardly changed at a gain of only 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015. That seasonally adjusted report was far short of the 0.6% projected by Bloomberg, and it was worse than all economist estimates as the range of expectations was 0.5% to 0.9%.

Wages and salaries make up about 70 percent of the total compensation costs for the index, and this was also little changed at 0.2 percent. The benefits component makes up the remaining 30 percent of compensation, and this was also little changed at 0.1 percent.

Things look marginally better from a year ago, but it is the recent trends that are weighted higher:

• Compensation costs for civilian workers was up by 2.0 percent for the 12-month period ending  June 2015, unchanged from the 12-month period ending June 2014.
• Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 1.9 percent over the year, about unchanged from the previous year when the increase was 2.0 percent.
• Compensation costs for state and local government workers increased 2.2 percent for the 12-month period ending June 2015. In June 2014 the increase was 2.0 percent. Wages and salaries increased 1.9 percent for the 12-month period ending June 2015, higher than a year earlier when the increase was 1.3 percent.

Inflation will return one day. When that day is may depend upon the price of oil and a few other factors, and maybe even the $15/hour fight taking place right now.

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