Wages increased by 2.6 percent over the past year, not much faster than inflation. That modest uptick probably would not prompt the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate more aggressively than it has signaled, economists said. Projections released at a Fed meeting this week suggested that officials were leaning toward a total of three rate increases this year.

“Wage growth is just not picking up as we would have expected at this point,” said Matthew Luzzetti, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank. As a result, he said, the Fed will be able “to continue moving gradually.”

One mystery of the American economy is this: How can employers can continue to raise pay so gradually, when the labor market keeps getting tighter? In the 1990s and early 2000s, the last time the job market looked like this, wages for rank-and-file workers rose at an annual rate of around 4 percent.

A host of explanations — ranging from globalization to slow gains in productivity — have been offered to explain the disconnect. Ms. Barrera says businesses may just be stuck in their ways.

“People are creatures of habit,” Ms. Barrera said. “If you have been using a strategy that has been working for you for a number of years, you aren’t going to suddenly change it.”

Who’s Been Left Out

Even though the labor force shrank over all, the report offered signs that the strong economy is coaxing some people back into the working world. A measure of unemployment that includes people who had given up looking for work hit 7.8 percent, a level not seen since 2001.

“We have realized that there were even more workers on the sidelines than we previously thought,” said Martha Gimbel, an economist at Indeed.com, a job-search site. Ms. Gimbel said that her site had seen an increase in people searching for things like “background check” and “full time,” which could indicate that the bustling job market has become irresistible for workers who might have been discouraged by a particularly bruising recession a decade ago.