For more than two years, persistent and pervasive inflation has taken big bites out of Americans’ paychecks. Annual real weekly wages were up 0.6% last month, a rate that’s a tick below the 0.7% gain seen in February 2020. June also marked the second consecutive month of year-over-year real hourly wage growth — the first back-to-back months of gains since early 2021. Fears of a dreaded “wage-price spiral” — when rising wages and prices feed into each other — have made a bogeyman out of wage growth. And finally, supply-side inflation has drastically cooled to the point where annual inflation is practically flat — which, ideally, gives firms more wiggle room to pay workers, she said.

Source: CNN July 16, 2023 18:56 UTC