What Years of Inflation Have Done to American Prices
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/09/11/business/economy/inflation-us-prices-gas-food-tariffs.html
Nearly every category of product costs more than it would have had prepandemic trends continued. And many product prices are still rising faster than they were before.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/09/11/business/economy/inflation-us-prices-gas-food-tariffs.html
Nearly every category of product costs more than it would have had prepandemic trends continued. And many product prices are still rising faster than they were before.
Sticky Wage Norms and the Real Wage Cost of Unexpected Inflation
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35624
We use a sample of administrative payroll data covering a large and nationally representative share of U.S. workers to study how wages adjusted during the recent inflation period. Most firms apply a single modal annual nominal wage increase to the majority of their workers, and these firm-level norms changed little during the recent period of unexpected inflation. As a result, nominal wages did not keep pace with prices for a large share of workers who stayed at their firms. Forty-three percent of workers continuously employed at the same firm over the four years spanning 2021–2024 experienced a real wage decline, with a mean loss of roughly nine percent among those who fell behind. Workers could escape sticky wage norms by changing employers — job-changers’ wages rose nearly one-for-one with inflation — but switching was too infrequent to matter for most. Even accounting for job-changers, 37 percent of all workers saw real wages decline over the 4-year period. Indexing firms’ modal raises one-for-one to inflation would have closed roughly 40 percent of the resulting shortfall relative to prepandemic trend. Drawing on cross-country evidence from Belgium, whose wages are automatically indexed to inflation, we show that incomplete wage indexation, rather than inflation itself, helps explain the persistence of depressed consumer sentiment during the 2021–2024 period.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35624
We use a sample of administrative payroll data covering a large and nationally representative share of U.S. workers to study how wages adjusted during the recent inflation period. Most firms apply a single modal annual nominal wage increase to the majority of their workers, and these firm-level norms changed little during the recent period of unexpected inflation. As a result, nominal wages did not keep pace with prices for a large share of workers who stayed at their firms. Forty-three percent of workers continuously employed at the same firm over the four years spanning 2021–2024 experienced a real wage decline, with a mean loss of roughly nine percent among those who fell behind. Workers could escape sticky wage norms by changing employers — job-changers’ wages rose nearly one-for-one with inflation — but switching was too infrequent to matter for most. Even accounting for job-changers, 37 percent of all workers saw real wages decline over the 4-year period. Indexing firms’ modal raises one-for-one to inflation would have closed roughly 40 percent of the resulting shortfall relative to prepandemic trend. Drawing on cross-country evidence from Belgium, whose wages are automatically indexed to inflation, we show that incomplete wage indexation, rather than inflation itself, helps explain the persistence of depressed consumer sentiment during the 2021–2024 period.
Six Charts That Explain How Americans Really Feel About the Economy
https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/six-charts-that-explain-how-americans-really-feel-about-the-economy-2243d7da
Official data shows steady growth and low unemployment, but misses how rising costs have left many Americans behind.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/six-charts-that-explain-how-americans-really-feel-about-the-economy-2243d7da
Official data shows steady growth and low unemployment, but misses how rising costs have left many Americans behind.
How Energy Is Driving Inflation—and How It’s Not
https://www.wsj.com/economy/how-energy-is-driving-inflationand-how-its-not-50560f6e
As diesel crosses $6, the risk is building that soaring energy costs will start to hurt far beyond gas pumps.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/how-energy-is-driving-inflationand-how-its-not-50560f6e
As diesel crosses $6, the risk is building that soaring energy costs will start to hurt far beyond gas pumps.