Wages among hourly workers in the United States rose above expectations in January, putting economists on alert for the stirrings of a possible wage-price spiral as concerns about the persistence of underlying inflationary pressures shift from supply-side bottlenecks to worker demands for higher pay. Average hourly earnings of all private-sector employees rose by 23 cents to $31.63 in January, or an over-the-year increase of 5.7 percent, according to the Labor Department’s latest jobs report (pdf). Consensus forecasts expected a more modest 5.2 percent rise after wages grew 5 percent in the 12 months through December. The 5.7 percent annual wage bump is the highest on record with the exception of a sharp, one-month increase in wages in April 2020. That’s when millions of relatively low-paid workers lost their jobs while their relatively high-paid counterparts remained employed, with the structural shift in employment composition leading to a boost in average wages. Surging inflation, which …