Wages have been rising faster than prices since March

As you can imagine, I pay a lot of attention to the news. Indeed, paying attention is half the labor that goes into producing the Editorial Board. Normal people, as I say, have better things to do than pay attention to politics. Way I see it, my job is to pay attention for the common good.

I guess I’ve been slacking. This morning, I learned something that’s been established fact for four months, but, well, I don’t know what I have been doing since March. I don’t know how I missed it – this fact is that big.

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. That someone like me, who pays a lot of attention to the news, missed something so big says less about me than it does about the news producers to whom I pay a lot of attention.

What’s the news? Here’s the Post, my italics:

“A year after inflation soared to the highest level in four decades, price increases are returning closer to normal levels, with families and businesses feeling the difference as wages rise faster than prices and policymakers debate how much more to slow the economy.”

You’ll notice I did not stress the top item. Prices are returning to normal levels. Huzzah! No one here has not felt the pain of paying too much for bacon and eggs. But prices have been the focus of the press and pundit corps for months, years, at least since the covid closed the economy. Wages, on the other hand, don’t get nearly the same degree of focus.

Moreover, the press and pundit corps habitually mangle the real and serious difference between prices and inflation. Prices are what you pay for stuff. Inflation is a systemic economic force. Inflation does indeed affect prices. Prices in turn affect inflation. But they are not the same. News producers often treat them as equal. The result is public confusion.

Fact is, normal people, which is to say, people who have better things to do than pay attention to politics, probably don’t know what inflation is and probably don’t care. What they know about is that the cost of bacon and eggs has been too high too long. What they care about is affording them.

Inflation has been slowing down for nearly a year now, but normal people, naturally, aren’t feeling it. They aren’t focused on systemic economic forces! They’re focused on the price of bacon and eggs! But the press and pundit corps have so mangled the difference that normal people blame inflation for their pain when they should blame prices – and those who set them.

Inflation is a nameless faceless force. There’s no one to blame.

Prices are not nameless and faceless.

The firms that provide most of the food that we eat are small in number. Their pricing power, however, is huge. Eighty percent of “everyday grocery items are supplied by a handful of companies,” according to a 2021 investigation by The Guardian. “Three firms dominate sales of 73 percent” of breakfast cereals, while “more than 80 percent beef processing and 70 percent of pork processing is controlled by four multinational giants.”

But remember what I put in italics?

I didn’t stress prices. I didn’t stress inflation.

I stressed wages.

Wages are rising faster than inflation. “Average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent from May to June, outpacing inflation by 0.2 percent, according to a separate BLS report released Wednesday,” the Post reported. In fact, it said, “wages have grown faster than inflation for four straight months.”

Let’s say that again.

Let’s say that again time with feeling, and in the knowledge that the press and pundit corps have, over the last four months, produced about four billion stories about normal people “still feeling the pain of inflation.”

Wages have grown faster than inflation for four straight months!

Not only are normal people bringing in more money than they’re paying out, they have been bringing in more money since the first quarter!

I’ll be honest with you.

I said, at the top, that I don’t know how I missed this – this fact is really that big. But as you probably have guessed by now, I’m being coy. I do know how.

I pay a lot of attention to the news, but, like any normal person in any democracy, I know only what news producers produce. If they habitually mangle the real and serious difference between inflation and prices, while making of fetish of “still feeling the pain of inflation,” what else can I do?

Fortunately, luck was on my side.

On my computer, actually.

In one tab, I had open the Post story I have been talking about. That version was about prices finally coming down. In another tab, I had open the same story, but updated to include news about wages outpacing prices. (Both mangle the difference between prices and inflation, treating them as synonymous.)

I pay a lot of attention to the news, for normal people who have better things to do than pay attention to politics, but only luck allowed me to notice that the same news story in the Post had two subheadlines.

The first (“updated July 12, 2023, at 9:15 a.m. EDT:): “But the Federal Reserve isn’t ready to declare victory yet, especially since not every source of inflation is fading at the same time or with the same momentum.” The second (“updated July 12, 2023, at 4:17 p.m. EDT”): “Wages are now rising faster than prices. The Federal Reserve isn’t ready to declare victory yet, because inflation isn’t consistently falling yet.” (Click here to see both.)

Four billion stories about “the pain of inflation.”

Will the next four months bring more stories about rising wages?