EJ Antoni, formerly nominated to be BLS Commissioner, says so at 5:50 on this FoxBusiness clip. True? Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. Well, not quite. Let’s take a look at a time series.
Figure 1: Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers, using CPI (brown), chained CPI (green), and AIER Everday Price Index (blue), all in 2025M01$. Chained CPI seasonally adjusted by author using X-13 in logs. Source: BLS via FRED, American Institute for Economic Research, and author’s calculations.
While CPI deflated average hourly earnings are above January levels, Everyday Price Index deflated earnings are just barely above (and certainly below December levels). Interestingly, real average hourly earnings are falling in all measures in September.
If one extends the comparison period back to January 2021, then it’s still true that CPI deflated hourly earnings rose faster than prices. Just sayin’.
And this guy wanted to be our latex salesman?
A recent JPMorganChase Institute report indicates that real (inflation-adjusted) income growth has slowed to near decade lows, with younger workers experiencing a more significant slowdown due to reduced job mobility. According to report, median real income growth has held at a low level for several months, and in October it was below 2% for those of prime working age. Noticed that trump officials just tell outright lies when the exact opposite is true.
Indeed they say words and do not care about connection of those words to observable reality. If the words sounds good to them then the words will sound good to the average ignorant Joe blow – and there will be no penalty for lying. Any statement of facts will be rejected as fake news – and the right wing media will repeat such a lie until the cult has taken it for true.