US consumers remain unimpressed with this progress, however, because they remember what they were paying for things pre-pandemic. Used car prices are 34% higher, food prices are 26% higher and rent prices are 22% higher than in January 2020, according to our calculations using PCE data.
While these are some of the more extreme examples of recent price increases, the average basket of goods and services that most Americans buy in any given month is 17% more expensive than four years ago.
And now much has pay gone up?
They claim it’s gone up more than that, but I’m very curious where they’re getting these numbers.
Here’s US bureau of labor statistics:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/usual-weekly-earnings/usual-weekly-earnings-over-time-total-men-women.htm#
Pay went up faster than inflation compared to before the pandemic
That graph shows real wages as being flat for the last 24 years, and even the bump you mentioned was barely noticable and fell back to baseline in like a year.
What would the chart look like when we exclude billionaires, C-suite executives, and everyone else who gets paid to own stuff instead of working for a living?
Well is it average or median?
Median is an average.
I can’t tell if you’re joking.
Difference between median and average
I wouldn’t count realtors as an authority on mathematical terminology.
Median and mean are two common, but different, types of average.
I suppose you got a point there. It does matter when talking about financial stats.
It looks flat, but real wages are up 10% in the last 24 years, highest ever
If we exclude billionaires it will decrease like $0.01 because it’s the median
It’s gone up more than 4% per year for the past 3 years. Even the article mentions a 5% increase when accounting for inflation. Though that seems high; the article is a mess.
BLS:
Compensation costs up 4.0 percent from December 2020 to December 2021
Compensation costs up 5.1 percent from December 2021 to December 2022
Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 4.2 percent for the 12-month period ending in December 2023
Obviously this is flawed as we don’t have data for December 2024. 2019-2020 wasn’t a great time overall, but really we need the data for March to March, etc.