Most of that increase in spending is driven by housing costs, which have surged, Zandi told CNN in an email on Friday. He added that families are also spending more at the grocery store; on buying, maintaining and insuring vehicles and on recreational services like cable.
Of course, paychecks have also grown over the past two years — but not by as much as the cost of living
Median weekly earnings for full time workers were $899 in Q1 2019, $1107 in Q2 2023.
That’s $3895/mo to $4797/mo, so the median full time worker is earning an extra $902/mo in that time span.
I don’t know how he was calculating “typical household” or what quarter he was working with, my point is that the net dollar amount is pretty misleading for an article headline. It sounds like the typical household is $700 worse off, but they definitely are not.
We have an appropriate measure for answering this question, real wages. It’s below pre-pandemic numbers but it’s catching up as wages are currently rising faster than inflation.
The time period was over two years, not four. Two years ago it was $996/week in Q2 of 2021. That’s $4316/mo or a $481/mo increase in that span. Still not $700 a month worse off, but they are worse off.
I think you are reading the “stuck at 2019 levels” and reading that as the starting point of their assertion.