The pace of annual wage gains for private sector workers is expected to improve later this year, according to the revised second quarterWage Trend Indicator (WTI)released today byBNA, a leading publisher of specialized news and information.

The WTI has risen for four straight quarters to 98.21 (second quarter 1976 = 100), up from 98.01 in the first quarter of 2011.

"The economy is still moving forward — it's just not moving forward very fast," economist Kathryn Kobe, a consultant who maintains and helped develop BNA's WTI database, said. "We're seeing small incremental improvements in the labor market,"Kobesaid.

She expects a pickup in the rate of annual wage growth to around 2.0 percent by the end of the year, based on the current path of economic recovery.

In the first quarter, wages and salaries in the private sector overall were up 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Department of Labor's latest employment cost index (ECI).

Reflecting an improved labor market, five of the WTI's seven components made positive contributions to the revised second quarter reading, while one factor was negative and one other was neutral.

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 decline in the WTI is predictive of a deceleration in the rate of private sector wage increases, while a sustained increase forecasts greater pressure to raise wages.