Did your raise beat inflation?
Prices outran paychecks for 25 straight months. Then wages pulled ahead — until this spring.
What matters to most households isn't whether prices are rising but whether pay is rising faster. The chart compares year-over-year growth in average hourly earnings with growth in the Consumer Price Index.
Before the pandemic, wages beat prices comfortably: pay grew around 3% a year, inflation around 2%. The spike in 2020 is a statistical artifact of low-wage layoffs, explained in "Layoffs raised average pay."
Then inflation took over. From April 2021 through April 2023, 25 straight months, prices rose faster than wages. The worst gap came in June 2022, when CPI inflation reached 9.0% and wage growth trailed it by 3.6 points.
From mid-2023 wages won again, and over the whole period they've come out ahead. Since February 2020, average hourly earnings are up 31.8% and consumer prices 28.4%.
That cushion is no longer growing. From April through July 2026, inflation has again edged above wage growth: 3.3% versus 3.2% in July.
- CES0500000003 · Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees, Total Private
- CPIAUCSL · Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average