U.S. workers in the private sector likely will experience only incremental changes, if any, in the pace of annual wage gains in the coming months, according to the preliminary fourth-quarter Wage Trend Indicator™ (WTI) released today by Bloomberg BNA, a leading publisher of specialized news and information.

The index held steady in the fourth quarter at 98.70 (second quarter 1976 = 100), matching the third-quarter reading. For the past two-and-a-half years, the WTI has fluctuated within a narrow range from 98.47 to 98.75, showing no clear upward or downward trend.

"The labor market is still showing positive momentum, but we're not drawing down our pool of unemployed workers very quickly," economist Kathryn Kobe, a consultant who maintains and helped develop Bloomberg BNA's WTI database, said. "As a result, the upward pressure on wages is too weak to accelerate the overall rate of wage increases."

Kobe said she expects the year-over-year gain in private sector wages to stay close to the 1.9 percent reported by the Department of Labor's employment cost index (ECI) for the 12 months ended in the second quarter of 2013. The WTI forecasts whether the rate of wage growth is accelerating or decelerating, but not the size of pay increases.

Over its history, the WTI has predicted a turning point in wage trends six to nine months before the trends are apparent in the ECI. A sustained increase in the WTI forecasts greater pressure to raise private sector wages, while a sustained decline is predictive of a deceleration in the rate of wage increases.

Reflecting mixed economic conditions, two of the WTI's seven components made positive contributions to the preliminary fourth quarter reading, while three factors were negative, and two others were neutral.