Bloomberg
New York


Small companies in the US see wage growth slowing in the coming months after 23% said in August that they recently boosted worker compensation.
A net 13% of managers last month said they plan to increase pay, down 2 percentage points from July, according to the seasonally adjusted results of 656 responses in a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business. The proportion of business owners who said they had recently raised pay was unchanged from July.
The group’s index of small-business optimism rose to 95.9 from 95.4 in July. The measure is still below the four-decade average of 98.
The survey by the NFIB, a lobbying group that says it has 350,000 small and independent business owners as members, was a leading indicator of national wage growth until 2012, when the correlation broke down. Since the start of 2013, the percentage of smaller companies preparing to increase pay has been as low as 6% and as high as 17%. Average hourly earnings reported on Friday by the Labor Department advanced 2.2% in August from a year earlier, compared with 2.1% in the 12 months ended in July.