Mild Growth Despite Low Unemployment.

The Q3 PayScale Index--which tracks quarterly and annual trends in compensation and provides a U.S. wage forecast for the coming quarter--reveals nominal wages increased by 0.5% quarter over quarter or 2.6% year over year, and cities with a concentration of technology jobs showed the strongest wage growth.

"Unemployment numbers hit a record low of 3.5% in September. This was not surprising with job growth averaging 161,000 new positions per month for the first nine months of the year. However, we are now seeing this remarkable job growth begin to slow, as the economy loses some of its spark. We expect wage growth to remain at its steady rate in the coming months as a result," says Sudarshan Sampath, director of Research at PayScale, Seattle, Wash., which provides cloud compensation data and software for businesses and individuals.

The tech center of San Francisco, Calif., again was the metro area in the U.S. that experienced the largest increase, with an annual wage growth of 4.3%. In addition, the tech cities of Seattle, Wash., and Austin, Texas, saw wages increase four percent year over year.

Annual wages in Pittsburgh, Pa., jumped 3.7%, ranking the city's wage growth the fourth fastest in the country after three quarters of lackluster growth.

Wage growth in the oil city of Houston, Texas, was the...