The Employment Cost Index (ECI) helps track wage and benefit cost trends with less short-term noise than some monthly series.
For households, the key takeaway is simple:
Nominal compensation can improve while real pressure remains.
What ECI is useful for
- Checking medium-term compensation momentum
- Comparing wage and benefit trends in one release
- Adding context to monthly earnings headlines
What ECI cannot answer alone
ECI does not directly tell you whether household purchasing power is improving. You still need inflation context and real earnings follow-through.
Practical use in US Kill Line
We use ECI as a wage-pressure context input:
- If compensation momentum slows while essential costs stay sticky, resilience weakens.
- If compensation momentum holds but inflation eases, recovery capacity can improve.
- If both weaken at once, line-crossing risk can move faster.
This avoids over-reliance on any single indicator.
Sources
- BLS Employment Cost Index, Q4 2025: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm
- BLS February 2026 release schedule: https://www.bls.gov/schedule/2026/02_sched.htm
Disclaimer
This article is informational only and is not financial or legal advice.