"Employment growth will gradually get better, but the increase in wages for each worker will remain weak," Mellman said. Unemployment exceeding 9 percent and a pool of almost 14 million Americans without a job give workers little leeway to ask for higher pay. That means the Fed will stick to its "low- for-long" policy on interest rates for some time, he said.
"With increasing profits and a lower jobless rate, at some point wages start to go up as workers get more bargaining power," Mellman said. "But we're probably a few years away from that."