Underwater To Inflation 10/13/26

There's a little piece of data tucked into the monthly jobs reports that economists have been keeping an eye on.

That's whether your pay is keeping up with inflation.

By the way, for many people, it's not.

Hourly pay up 3.1%, but consumer prices up 3.4%, so wages are not keeping up with inflation.

That's CNBC's Frank Holland.

The most recent inflation data show prices rising at an annual rate of 3.4% in both the personal consumption expenditures report and the consumer price index.

Here's Mad Money host Jim Kramer and CNBC's Carl Quintanilla.

As wage growth, that's the average of what kind of raises people are getting, sinks to a little more than two and a half percent.

This 3.0 annual wage growth, three-month annualized is 2.6.

That's what I'm really focused on because we all know that there's terrible inflation, so that's a group of people I think are feeling disenfranchised in America today.

Most people's raises are less than inflation.

This is a pretty steady, uh, labor market at this point, but it's not delivering wage gains that are keeping up with inflation, so families are getting squeezed.

That's former Biden White House Treasury official and current groundwork fellow Kitty Richards on CNBC.

And here's a take from JP Morgan's David Kelly.

I mean, this economy is a tortoise disguised as a greyhound.

It is just not as fast as it feels on Wall Street because on Wall Street we're looking at the AI boom.

If you look at the rest of the economy, this is the sixth month in a row in which real wage growth year over year will be negative.

This is not a boom.

I mean, it's not a bust either, but this economy's not booming.

Wage gains are at their lowest in more than five years.

If you're getting a raise and it's less than the rate of inflation of about 3.4%, forget about getting ahead.

You're not keeping up.

More on wage growth, or the lack thereof, at CNBC.com. I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC.