No it won't last, because as soon as the wages start coming up then the fed will say "inflation is heating up" and raise interest rates, causing businesses to spend more on debt service and less on employees.
The US has a long-term severe labor shortage that has already begun. There isn't anything that can stop that, including robotics / automation and artificial intelligence. There's nothing that can happen in the next 20 years, except for a protracted recession-like economy (or big crash), that can significantly ease up that labor shortage.
It's a matter of facts. The population growth rate is too low. The rate of retirement is too high (boomers exiting). Immigration is at modest levels versus the total population base. Almost any consistent GDP growth with those factors in play, will generate an extreme labor demand squeeze. It's particularly bad for blue collar jobs; the boomer generation is loaded with blue collar skills / trade persons, and they're exiting in droves.
Major economies with low population growth like Germany are able to maintain perpetually low unemployment with very modest growth. The US routinely grows 3x to 4x faster than Germany, including presently. It's obvious what the consequences of sustained 1.5%-2% (much less higher) GDP growth must have on the US when it comes to labor shortages from this point forward, when all the labor factors are taken into account.
There's a long queue of people around the globe who would be eager to move to the US to participate in the American labour market, if they could. So labour shortages are easy to solve, if there's political will.
Higher rates only affects new issuances of bonds, rolling over of existing debt, or bank loans (which are a small fraction of the total debt market in developed economies).
The average maturity of a corporate bond is now 15+ years, and most bonds pay a fixed interest rate that doesn't vary due to current rates [1].
That means that any change to rates will not have much of an immediate impact on the interest expense line item. On the other hand, it will actually increase the interest income they receive on their cash balances.
Not to necessarily agree with the OP's prognosis, but the Fed rate also affects inflation which can affect the viability of every contract written in terms of dollars when it strays from where it's expected to be.
I agree that it won’t last, but I think exactly the opposite will happen: with wages going up, people will spend more money, which will increase the profits of businesses, who will use the profits to hire more people to keep up with the increased demand.
Retail shelf space is capital. If consumers empty shelves twice as fast, the return on shelf space-capital will double (assuming the markup doesn’t change). It’s not the Fed raising rates, it’s the market over-bidding the Fed.
If the Fed were able to stop these movements, our economy wouldn’t be as bubbly as it is.
