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Have Paychecks Kept Up With the Cost of Living?

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On average, pay has risen faster than prices in recent years. But the overall picture is complicated — and it’s not just facts versus “vibes.”Have Americans’ paychecks kept up with the cost of living over the past several years?It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.According to most Americans, the answer is a clear “no.” In polls and interviews ahead of the presidential election, people of virtually all ideologies and income levels say inflation has made it harder to make ends meet, eclipsing whatever raises they have managed to win from their employers.According to economic data, the answer appears, at least on the surface, to be “yes.” Income and earnings have outpaced inflation since the start of the pandemic, according to a variety of both government and private-sector sources. That is especially true for the lowest earners — a partial reversal of the rising inequality of recent decades.But this is not a simple case of facts versus “vibes.” Economic statistics are based on broad averages. Dig deeper, and the story becomes more complicated. How a given family or individual has fared over the past five years depends on a litany of factors: whether the earners own their home or rent; whether they had to buy a car or send a child to day care; whether they were able to change jobs or demand a raise.“I feel like some people are being very dismissive, saying, ‘Oh, people are wrong — there has been all this real wage growth,’ but that is a simple average,” said Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard economist who has studied how people experience inflation. “It’s actually very, very hard to say people are wrong — I would almost never say that.”The bottom line: Most American workers are probably making more money today, adjusted for inflation, than they were in 2019. But not all have seen their pay keep up with their own cost of living, and many — perhaps most — are lagging behind where they would be if prepandemic trends had continued unabated. Those complications may help explain why so many Americans believe they have fallen behind.

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Change since end of 2019 in various earnings measures
Notes: After-tax income is per capita and excludes government transfer payments and is adjusted for inflation by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. Hourly earnings are for production and nonsupervisory workers and are adjusted for inflation by the CPI-W. Median weekly earnings are for full-time workers and are adjusted for inflation using the CPI-U. Average weekly earnings are for all workers and are also adjusted using the CPI-U. All series are monthly except for median weekly earnings, which are quarterly.Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkBy The New York Times

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Change in inflation-adjusted weekly earnings by wage level, 2019-2024
Note: Change is measured in the third quarter of each year, not seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York Times

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Median weekly earnings vs. prepandemic trend
Notes: Earnings are shown in 2023 dollars and are for full-time workers. Data is seasonally adjusted. Trend line is based on 2014 to 2019 data.Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hollywood Movie Producers Find a Harder Time Making a Living

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    Corporate consolidation and technology have upended many jobs in recent decades. But few arcs are more surprising than that of the Hollywood producer.In more than three decades as a studio executive and producer, Kevin Misher has worked on some of the most beloved movies in Hollywood, including “Rudy,” “Meet the Parents” and “Public Enemies.”As recently as 2012, his production company, Misher Films, supported three development executives and three assistants. It had a studio deal worth more than $1 million in many years, which allowed it to acquire scripts and hire writers while meeting payroll.But today, even as Mr. Misher continues to produce high-profile movies like “Coming 2 America” and “You People,” as well as television shows, documentaries and podcasts, his company has slimmed down amid the industry’s changing economics. Years often pass between the time producers start a project and the time they are paid. Deals for producers have dried up as studios have sought greater efficiencies. Mr. Misher’s six employees have dwindled to one, along with a partner who earns a portion of his fees.“Those deals sustained you — they were a paycheck,” Mr. Misher said. “They allowed you to make a basic wage while waiting for a payout.”The unraveling of these arrangements has not only made life harder for an accomplished producer like Mr. Misher, whose job is to originate movies by identifying promising material, and to oversee the hundreds or thousands of people involved in writing and filming. It has also hollowed out the field’s middle tier and made it almost impossible for young people to enter the profession.“It starts to self-select for people who come in already with money,” said Mr. Misher, part of a group of more than 100 producers called Producers United, who are seeking more favorable financial terms through discussions with Hollywood studios. “The perspective gets narrower, it isn’t as innovative or diverse.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Poverty Increased in 2023 as Prices Rose and Pandemic Aid Programs Expired

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    More faced hardship in the United States last year, the Census Bureau said, as inflation and the end of subsidies outweighed higher incomes.The nation’s poverty rate rose last year even as incomes improved, the government reported on Tuesday, reflecting higher prices and the expiration of the last pandemic relief programs.The share of Americans living in poverty as defined by the Census Bureau’s “supplemental” measure, which takes into account a broader range of benefits and expenses than the official poverty rate, rose to 12.9 percent in 2023, from 12.4 percent in 2022. The median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose to $80,610, finally regaining its prepandemic level.Poverty levels have risen anew in recent years after a wave of pandemic relief aid — and an exceptionally strong labor market that lifted the wages of many at the bottom of the pay spectrum — collided with the most rapid inflation in a generation.Stimulus checks, extra unemployment insurance and expanded tax credits for low-income families cut child poverty in half in 2021, to the lowest rate since record keeping began, in 1967. But the expiration of those supports, along with the jump in prices for food and other necessities, reversed the gains in 2022.“You need two kinds of strategies to keep poverty down: One is the economic strategy, and one is the investments in core programs and the safety net,” said Olivia Golden, interim executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a progressive advocacy group. “To me, the idea that policies have high stakes in terms of the lives of families and their material hardship is very vivid as you look over the last few years.”The income gains were particularly pronounced for low-wage households, rural households and men, with the gap between male and female earnings rising for the first time since 2003. Census officials say that may have been because of an increase in the labor force participation of Hispanic women, who tend to earn less.Poverty Rebounded Sharply in 2022 and 2023As pandemic aid expired and prices rose, the share of Americans living below the poverty threshold went back up.

    Data is the “supplemental” poverty rate, which accounts for taxes and subsidies. Gaps in data are due to changes in Census Bureau methodology.Source: Columbia Center on Poverty and Social Policy analysis of U.S. Census Bureau dataBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Is It Silicon Valley’s Job to Make Guaranteed Income a Reality?

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    For the last couple of years, the tech community has tested no-strings-attached payments of $500 or $1,000 a month to those in dire need. Some of these experiments have happened in the heart of Silicon Valley, where a one-bedroom apartment rents for $3,000 a month and a modest house is often an unaffordable luxury.Silicon Valley’s backing of these efforts has propelled the idea of a guaranteed income — also known as cash transfers, unconditional cash and, in its most utopian form, universal basic income — into the mainstream. But a bipartisan political consensus around the movement is fracturing even though the data seems to show that the programs are effective.In recent months, the Texas attorney general went to court to prevent public funds from being used in a basic income program in Houston. Republicans in Iowa, Idaho and South Dakota banned similar programs. A ban in Arizona was vetoed by the governor.The movement has scored a few victories, too. A proposal for a statewide basic income program is likely to be on the ballot in Oregon this fall. The measure would give $750 to each state resident annually, funded by a 3 percent tax on corporations with revenue over $25 million.It is a critical moment for guaranteed income, which has been touted by the OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, the Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff and others.On Monday, the results from the biggest direct income program to date, the Unconditional Income Study, will be released. The study was the idea of Mr. Altman, who has emerged as the chief cheerleader of a boom in artificial intelligence that, he says, will sweep away all that came before it. Anyone whose job can be done by A.I. software might need a guaranteed income by and by.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For L.G.B.T.Q. People, Moving to Friendlier States Comes With a Cost

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    Laws targeting gender-affirming care have uprooted thousands. But places that are more supportive can also be more expensive.When Stefanie Newell decided to move to Denver last year, the choice was about acceptance. Feeling comfortable as a transgender woman didn’t seem possible in San Antonio, her hometown, in the midst of a flood of Texas legislation targeting the L.G.B.T.Q. community.But the decision also had financial implications. In San Antonio, she lived with her mother, and the cost of living was generally low. Just driving her stuff two states north wiped out her savings.“I thought I was well prepared, and when I arrived I was flat broke,” said Ms. Newell, 25. And Denver isn’t cheap: Her one-bedroom apartment downtown costs about $1,800 a month, which she pays with a mix of part-time paralegal work, freelance writing and editing, and ad revenue from her content on Instagram. “It’s taken off to the point where I’m not in the negative,” she said. “It definitely gets close.”It’s a choice that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the United States have made for decades: Move from a less welcoming part of the country to one, usually a coastal city, with more protections and a bigger community. The price of tolerance was higher rent.The need for relocation seemed to be declining in the 21st century, as gay marriage became the law of the land and pride went mainstream. But over the last two years, a flurry of laws banning transition care for transgender youths — variations of which are now on the books in 25 states — have sent more people in search of sanctuary.Even though most of the laws are based on gender identity rather than sexual orientation, the impact goes beyond transgender people. Abbie Goldberg, director of women’s and gender studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., regularly surveys L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and families. In one recent study, she found that Florida’s law restricting discussion of sexual identity in public schools made parents who are L.G.B.T.Q. more likely to want to leave the state.It’s More Expensive to Live in L.G.B.T.Q.-Friendly StatesPlaces that protect LG.B.T.Q. rights, as measured by the Movement Advancement Project’s accounting of supportive and restrictive laws, also tend to have a higher cost of living, expressed as a percentage of the national average.

    Source: Movement Advancement Project, Commerce DepartmentBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    GDP Gain in First Quarter Revised Downward in U.S.

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    Consumers eased up on spending in the face of rising prices and high interest rates, Commerce Department data shows.Economic growth slowed more sharply early this year than initially estimated, as consumers eased up on spending amid rising prices and high interest rates.U.S. gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down from 3.4 percent in the final quarter of 2023 and below the 1.6 percent growth rate reported last month in the government’s preliminary first-quarter estimate.The data released on Thursday reflects more complete data than the initial estimate, released just a month after the quarter ended. The government will release another revision next month.The preliminary data fell short of forecasters’ expectations, but economists at the time were largely unconcerned, arguing that the headline G.D.P. figure was skewed by big shifts in business inventories and international trade, components that often swing wildly from one quarter to the next. Measures of underlying demand were significantly stronger.The revised data may be harder to dismiss. Consumer spending rose at a 2 percent annual rate — down from 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter, and 2.5 percent in the preliminary data for the last quarter — and measures of underlying demand were also revised down. An alternative measure of economic growth, based on income rather than spending, cooled to 1.5 percent in the first quarter, from 3.6 percent at the end of 2023.Still, the new data does little to change the bigger picture: The economy has slowed but remains fundamentally sound, buoyed by consumer spending that remains resilient even after the latest revisions. That spending is supported by rising incomes and the result of a strong job market that features low unemployment and rising wages. There is still no sign that the recession that forecasters spent much of last year warning about is imminent.Business investment, a sign of confidence in the economy, was actually revised up modestly in the latest data. Income growth, too, was revised up.Inflation, however, remains stubborn. Consumer prices rose at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, slightly slower than in the preliminary data but still well above the Federal Reserve’s long-run target of 2 percent.In response, policymakers have raised interest rates to their highest level in decades and have said they will keep them there until inflation cools further. The modestly slower growth reflected in Thursday’s data is unlikely to change that approach.The Fed will get a more up-to-date snapshot of the economy on Friday, when the government releases data on inflation, income and spending in April. More

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    Why Better Times (and Big Raises) Haven’t Cured the Inflation Hangover

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    Frustrated by higher prices, many Pennsylvanians with fresh pay raises and solid finances report a sense of insecurity lingering from the pandemic.A disconnect between economic data and consumer sentiment is being felt by Pennsylvania residents, including, from left, Donald Woods, a retired firefighter in West Philadelphia; Darren Mattern, a nurse in Altoona; and Lindsay Danella, a server in Altoona.Left: Caroline Gutman for The New York Times. Center and right: Ross Mantle for The New York TimesIn western Pennsylvania, halfway through one of those classic hazy March days when the worst of winter has passed, but the bare trees tilting in the wind tell everyone spring is yet to come, Darren Mattern was putting in some extra work.Tucked at a corner table inside a Barnes & Noble cafe in Logan Town Centre, a sprawling exurban shopping complex in Blair County, he tapped away at two laptops. His work PC was open with notes on his clients: local seniors in need of at-home health care and living assistance, whom he serves as a registered nurse. On his sleeker, personal laptop he eyed some coursework for the master’s degree in nursing he’s finishing so he can work as a supervisor soon.Mr. Mattern, warm and steady in demeanor, says the “huge blessing” of things evident in his everyday life at 35 — financial security, a home purchase last year, a baby on the way — weren’t possible until recently.He had warehouse jobs for most of his 20s, making a few dollars above minimum wage (in a state where that’s still $7.25 an hour), until he took nursing classes in the late 2010s. Shortly after becoming certified, he pushed through long days in a hospital during the height of the Covid pandemic at a salary of $40,000. Today, he has what he calls “the best nursing job pay-wise I’ve ever had,” at $85,000.Mr. Mattern’s trajectory is one bright line in a broad upward trend that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, and millions of other Americans, have experienced since the pandemic recession — a comeback in which unemployment has been below 4 percent for the longest stretch since the 1960s, small-business creation has flourished and the stock market has reached new heights.There’s a disconnect, however, between the raw data and a national mood that is somewhat improved but still sour. A surge in average weekly pay and full-time employment has helped offset the demoralizing effects of a two-year bout of heavy inflation as the global economy chaotically reopened. But it has not neutralized them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Employers Added 303,000 Jobs in 39th Straight Month of Growth

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    The March data increased confidence among economists and investors that robust hiring and rising wages can continue to coexist while inflation eases.Another month, another burst of better-than-expected job gains.Employers added 303,000 jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 3.9 percent in February. Expectations of a recession among experts, once widespread, are now increasingly rare.It was the 39th straight month of job growth. And employment levels are now more than three million greater than forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just before the pandemic shock.The resilient data generally increased confidence among economists and market investors that the U.S. economy has reached a healthy equilibrium in which a steady roll of commercial activity, growing employment and rising wages can coexist, despite the high interest rate levels of the last two years.From late 2021 to early 2023, inflation was outstripping wage gains, but that also now appears to have firmly shifted, even as wage increases decelerate from their roaring rates of growth in 2022. Average hourly earnings for workers rose 0.3 percent in March from the previous month and were up 4.1 percent from March 2023.Wage growth continues to slowYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    U.S. Economy Grew at 3.3% Rate in Latest Quarter

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    The increase in gross domestic product, while slower than in the previous period, showed the resilience of the recovery from the pandemic’s upheaval.The U.S. economy continued to grow at a healthy pace at the end of 2023, capping a year in which unemployment remained low, inflation cooled and a widely predicted recession never materialized.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down from the 4.9 percent rate in the third quarter but easily topped forecasters’ expectations and showed the resilience of the recovery from the pandemic’s economic upheaval.The latest reading is preliminary and may be revised in the months ahead.Forecasters entered 2023 expecting the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign of interest-rate increases to push the economy into reverse. Instead, growth accelerated: For the full year, measured from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023, G.D.P. grew 3.1 percent, up from less than 1 percent the year before and faster than the average for the five years preceding the pandemic. (A different measure, based on average output over the full year, showed annual growth of 2.5 percent in 2023.)“Stunning and spectacular,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, said of the latest data. “We’ll take the win.” More