By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is the second article in our eleven-part, Spring 2013 Wage Series. In this article, we take a look at recent contract settlements and examine how those trends vary from recent previous years. Our view of 2012 settlements and what we have so far from 2013, indicates a trend towards rising settlements, but not a full return to the robust, pre Great Recession settlements. Whether a healthy economy will accelerate these trends further, is something we’ll discuss later in this series.