Of course, even if the labor market is not overheated currently, one might worry that overheating could rapidly emerge as labor market conditions strengthen further, causing inflation to surge. I consider this unlikely for several reasons.
First, the pace of labor market improvement has slowed appreciably in the past couple of years: For example, average payroll gains moderated from 250,000 per month in 2014 to 180,000 last year, and the unemployment rate declined 1-3/4 percentage points cumulatively over  6  An exception to this pattern is the Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker (WGT), which does show a noticeable acceleration in hourly wages as self-reported in the Current Population Survey.