To be sure, labor market tightness has not, as yet, put the current expansion at risk. Despite the ever shrinking pool of available labor, recent readings on year-over-year increases in labor compensation have held steady or, by some measures, even eased.
This seems to have resulted  BIS Review 79/1999  2  in part from falling inflation, which has implied that relatively modest nominal wage gains have provided healthy increases in purchasing power. Also, a residual fear of job skill obsolescence, which has induced a preference for job security over wage gains, probably is still holding down wage levels.