Last month’s jobs numbers—plus the downward revisions to previous months—were disappointing at best. When the latest jobs report comes out this Friday, we’ll be watching the top-line employment numbers to see if that’s just a blip or a new trend. The recent slowdown in job growth could be largely due to unseasonably harsh weather. If that’s the case, then we can expect a solid bounce back this month. If not, and slower growth in recent months is actually the start of a new trend, more trouble may lie ahead—and policymakers should take the need to spur a stronger recovery more seriously.

Before the recent slowdown in job growth, it looked like the main lagging indicator was wage growth. Last week, the Employment Cost Index showed a pick-up in growth with year-over-year civilian nominal compensation rising 2.6 percent. While this is a bit faster growth than some other wage series indicate, it’s still far below  thresholds that should prompt the Federal Reserve to begin raising interest rates to slow down the economy out of fear of wage-led inflationary pressure. It is true that real (inflation-adjusted) wage growth has been healthy in recent months, but this is driven by rapidly decelerating inflation, not strong nominal wage growth. The rapid price disinflation is driven in turn by a combination of transitory shocks (e.g., oil price declines) which will likely not continue and overall economic weakness. And, the fact remains that there is a long history of poor wages to make up. All indicators of wage growth need to be consistently stronger for a full recovery.

Graduation season is a particularly apt time to look at how wages have been going for young people. In the coming weeks, EPI will be releasing a more in-depth analysis of what kind of job market graduating seniors are entering. The graphic below, which looks at real average wages of recent high school and college graduates, is a preview. There are a couple things to note. One, on average young college grads can expect higher wage than high school grads, but the college premium has been relatively flat (for both young graduates as well as for all workers) for nearly 15 years. And, two, if recent history is any indication, entry-level wages for graduating seniors are expected to be no better than they were for the corresponding cohort who graduated 15 years ago. 15 years of stagnant wages—even for that small minority of young workers with a 4-year college degree—does not signal a strong economy.

This all signals that the economy (let alone workers and their families) could benefit greatly from a lengthy spell of solid wage increases, which reflect productivity growth and which begin to claw back some of the decline in labor’s share of national income that has characterized the recovery from the Great Recession so far The Fed should contribute to act in the best interest of the economy, by delaying any action that would slow down growth.