From the drive-through clerk at McDonald’s to the greeter at Wal-Mart, unskilled workers are getting raises, signaling a broadening of labor market gains that could give Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen reason to begin raising interest rates this year.

Average hourly earnings in industries paying less than $12.50 an hour a year ago rose 3.2 percent in the 12 months through April, about 1 percentage point more than wage growth for the job market as a whole, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

This development may be the start of a long-awaited catch- up for lower-wage workers, who suffered disproportionately during the recession and recovery. It is being driven in part by state governments raising their minimum wages, and also through voluntary decisions by companies to raise employees’ pay.

The Fed has been looking for evidence that improvement in the labor market isn’t just confined to jobs in high-paying industries requiring specialized skills. Policy makers see continued wage increases as bolstering consumer spending and helping bring inflation up to the Fed’s 2 percent target.

“The Fed probably finds it encouraging that even the less skilled segments of the population are seeing wage gains,” said Roberto Perli, a former Fed economist who is now a partner at Cornerstone Macro LLC in Washington. “It’s another sign that slack in the labor market is diminishing.”

Payrolls Report

Central bank leaders will get another read on the job market Thursday, when the government issues its monthly payrolls report a day earlier than usual because of the U.S. Independence Day holiday.

Employers probably added 230,000 jobs in June, above the monthly average for 2015, and the unemployment rate dropped to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent, according to the median forecasts of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. A private report Wednesday from ADP Research Institute showed companies boosted payrolls in June by 237,000 positions, the most in six months.

The declining unemployment rate doesn’t provide a complete picture of the job market, Yellen said in a press conference on June 17.

“There appear to be unusually large elements of slack,” she said. Among them: Some 6.7 million Americans were working part-time for economic reasons in May, well above the 5.5 million average since 1995.

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