Do wages help predict inflation?

In the financial press, productivity-related wages are often cited as an inflation indicator. For example, recently slow rates of wage growth have been noted as a factor that will keep inflation rates low in the future. While inflation and wage growth do appear to be highly correlated over longer time periods, it is not clear whether movements in wage growth precede movements in inflation, thereby providing predictive content for future inflation. In this article, Kenneth Emery and Chih-Ping Chang examine the usefulness of wage growth as a predictor of inflation, as well as carry out a stability analysis of the relationship underlying inflation and wages. The results caution against using wage growth as a signal of future inflation in that wage growth has no information content for future inflation. Furthermore, the bivariate relationship between inflation and wage growth is shown to be unstable.