That entire political propaganda point is based on grabbing a nominal salary growth in 2023 that is trying to catch up to the inflation of 2021/22 (and the salary growth is already starting to tailing off) and adjusting to make a “real” salary growth using present day inflation which is half as much the one in 2021/2022.
It’s all based on a mathematical artifact that salary growth reflects inflation with a delay of about 2 years and just so happens last quarter of 2023 and first of 2024 are a sweet spot were 2y delayed inflation minus present day inflation yields the maximum value.
Extend those maths back 3 or 4 years and the picture is much worse but that can be “safelly” argued away by propagandists as being due to Trump. Well if that is due to Trump then so is the recent spike in salary growth since it’s pretty much a perfect match to the inflation of 2 years ago that was supposedly due to Trump.
It’s funny because the two charts I’ve linked, from the Fed, one for median wages and the other for inflation, together add up to quite a different image, leaving us with 3 possible explanations:
that chart your provided is bullshit
it’s the Fed’s own data that’s bullshit and your chart is right
they’re both right, and yours being average and the Fed’s being median, neatly proves the point I’ve been making that average wage figures are unrepresentative of the experience of most people because slary growth for top wage earners pulls the average up even whilst most people don’t see any of that wage “growth”
Curiously the comment on your chart about the values around the Covid period reinforce my 3rd point: the chart got a massive jump then because low earners lost their jobs much more than high earners, not because salaries actually went up.
Median wage reflects the wage of one person who’s exactly in the middle. The average of the middle quantile also adds ten million people on the left and right side
It’s actually not very different from the median real wages
Bollocks.
That entire political propaganda point is based on grabbing a nominal salary growth in 2023 that is trying to catch up to the inflation of 2021/22 (and the salary growth is already starting to tailing off) and adjusting to make a “real” salary growth using present day inflation which is half as much the one in 2021/2022.
It’s all based on a mathematical artifact that salary growth reflects inflation with a delay of about 2 years and just so happens last quarter of 2023 and first of 2024 are a sweet spot were 2y delayed inflation minus present day inflation yields the maximum value.
Extend those maths back 3 or 4 years and the picture is much worse but that can be “safelly” argued away by propagandists as being due to Trump. Well if that is due to Trump then so is the recent spike in salary growth since it’s pretty much a perfect match to the inflation of 2 years ago that was supposedly due to Trump.
Going back a few years just proves my point
Before COVID salaries were much worse than today when adjusting for inflation
It’s funny because the two charts I’ve linked, from the Fed, one for median wages and the other for inflation, together add up to quite a different image, leaving us with 3 possible explanations:
Curiously the comment on your chart about the values around the Covid period reinforce my 3rd point: the chart got a massive jump then because low earners lost their jobs much more than high earners, not because salaries actually went up.
Median wage reflects the wage of one person who’s exactly in the middle. The average of the middle quantile also adds ten million people on the left and right side
It’s actually not very different from the median real wages