Inflation is back and worse than it's been in decades. Consumer prices rose 0.9% in October and are up 6.2% in the last twelve months. Two more months of moderate increases, and the CPI will be 6.5% in 2021, the highest inflation since 1982.
As a result, after surging in the earliest stages of the pandemic, "real" (inflation-adjusted) average hourly wages have been trending downward since peaking in April 2020 and are down 1.2% in the past year. In fact, real average hourly wages are up only 1.5% since February 2020 (pre-COVID) versus a gain of 2.3% in the twenty months before COVID arrived.
Inflation Returns
November 16, 2021