On Topic: Waiting for the punch line

So which do you want first, as the old joke goes: the good news or the bad news?

I have to warn you, though, you might not find the punch line all that thigh-slapping funny.

A Harris survey released this past month for CareerBuilder, the online job search site, reported that 57 percent of the employers who responded contended they intended to hire university graduates sometime this year.

It was only a slight boost from 2013 - four percent - but at least it's going in the right direction.

But here comes the depressing bit: More than half of those same companies - 56 percent - said those new workers will start off at less than $40,000 a year.

What's that you say? That's still enough to get your offspring out of your basement - and your refrigerator - and into a place of her or his own?

Before you and your spouse book that celebratory cruise, consider this: A survey by the National Association for Business Economics suggests pay is going to remain pretty much as flat as a highway through Nebraska for the near future.

The NABE's quarterly survey, conducted over mid-March to April 1, found that its respondents 'expect wage growth to remain fairly subdued, rising between zero and three percent over the next three years.” (A very-condensed summary can be found at the organization's website, http://nabe.com/NABE_Industry_Survey_April_2014_Summary.)

Keep in mind that pay has been hogtied at around two percent the past few years since the feds declared the recession to be over, according to U.S. Labor Department figures.

And here's the thing, this expectation of dawdling pay growth is despite the finding that 'survey participants continue to report strong expectations for increased growth over the course of 2014,” according to the head guy himself, Jack Kleinhenz, NABE president and chief economist for the National Retail Federation.

So what's going on here? If things look rosy, why not invest in human capital? Companies will need the people, and those employees, in turn, will spend their wages - for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, smartphones and Netflix - thereby nourishing the economy.

Not so fast, NABE's members said. Profit margins haven't been so hot, and the price tags for both materials and non-labor costs - training, facilities, travel, equipment, software and the like - have been climbing.

And as many studies have shown, there's still a lot of folk seeking work in a lot fields.

So, companies will take on new hired hands, but they're not going to stuff the paychecks. At least, not any time soon.

Moreover, as Roberta Chinsky Matuson, now head of Florence, Mass.-based Matuson Consulting, management author and a former Monster.com human-resources expert, told me in an interview back in 2010, younger job seekers are going to OK with those stingy take-home salaries.

'It used to be, ‘Take this job and shove it.' Now it'll be, ‘Today I have a job and I think I'll love it,'” she predicted.

'The recession,” she speculated, 'forced them to grow up.”

As the economy continues its snail's pace improvement, will newly hired workers just be glad to have a job - even if the pay isn't exactly munificent? Or will they join up, then move on to another employer at the first glimmer of slightly higher wages and a come-hither smile?

We'll see who gets the last laugh.

Michael Chevy Castranova is Sunday editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michael.castranova@sourcemedia.net