Wages increase more finally. The recovery could enter a new phase.

This is certainly not the best of times or has nothing to envy to the worst moments, but the latest employment report still tells two slightly different economic occasions – or at least a decisive moment.

On the one hand, if you like the good news, there was a lot. The 201,000 jobs that the economy added in August were almost as numerous as expected, which is strong enough for such a long recovery. If you were auditioning for the role of a Fox News host, you might point out that we added a few more jobs in the last year – an average of 194,000 per month – that we had in 2013 (an average of 191,000 per month).

[U.S. wages growing at fastest rate in 9 years as unemployment stays at 3.9 percent]

Of course, this is very misleading since the Republicans simply gave President Trump an important fiscal stimulus after imposing a big austerity program on President Barack Obama five years ago. But it is still quite remarkable when we consider that unemployment is currently 3.9% against 7.2% at the time. Job growth is expected to be faster when more people are looking for work – when unemployment is high. So, even if you do not take into account some of these factors, as you should, the fact is that the economy has not lost a lot of momentum, even though we have gained a lot of jobs.

Even better, however, workers could finally start to get the kind of increase that can be expected in this economy. For a long time, this was the Achilles' heel of the recovery: we added a lot more paychecks, but they were not much bigger.

As former Obama adviser Jason Furman points out, this is partly due to weak productivity growth, and another part is due to low inflation. But the rest is something of a mystery. Wages are expected to increase further when unemployment is low, as workers should theoretically have greater bargaining power. But it has not really happened.

[How the economy has fared since Trump’s tax cuts were passed]

Well, at least until now, maybe. After rebounding at the same level over the last two years, wage growth reached a post-crisis high of 2.9%. The usual caveats apply – these numbers are noisy, and that could be a problem rather than the beginning of an upward trend – but it's more than what we had to do for a while. Even though it's barely enough to keep up with inflation.

In addition, the report on Friday's unemployment included some dark lines on what was a cloud of money.

As impressive as job growth was last year, it has slowed in recent months. Again, it could be nothing. But the employment figures for the previous two months have been revised downward by 50,000. According to the Federal Reserve of Saint-Louis, these revisions tend to be procyclical: they increase when growth is on the rise and down. It is therefore possible that the high level of sugar from Trump 's $ 1.5 trillion tax cut will begin to disappear. Or that there are not as many people who do not have jobs and who still want them. Or both.

The fact that the labor force decreased by 469,000 – a negative reason that the unemployment rate remained stable at 3.9% – combined with rising wages certainly suggests that we would approach the semi-mythical country of "full employment". The idea is that if a higher salary is not enough to get people out of the sidelines, then there may not be a lot left. This may seem hard to believe when the proportion of people aged 25 to 54 who should be at the peak of their working years and who actually work is still lower than it was before the start of the recession or even only a few months. since. But we can not rule it out. In the case of full employment, growth would naturally slow down, then slow further as the Fed raises rates to control inflation.

So the recovery we have experienced and which we have reluctantly – if not quite – been following for nine years may well be entering a new phase: slower growth, higher wages and few people unable to find work. The labor market could finally escape the shadow of the Great Recession in the last decade. Whether it's a smooth transition or a more difficult transition ultimately depends on the Fed. It may need to raise rates a bit more aggressively than expected to keep inflation in its Goldilocks zone, but not too quickly so that the economy is no longer safe.

It is at this point that we will discover if sluggishness and stability really win the race, or if we recover without pay catch-up.