{"id":806766,"date":"2026-08-08T11:38:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806766\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T11:38:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:38:33","slug":"americans-got-their-biggest-raises-in-40-years-inflation-took-most-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806766\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans got their biggest raises in 40 years. Inflation took most of it."},"content":{"rendered":"

The typical American’s paycheck has grown faster since 2019 than in any stretch since the early 1980s. Most of it didn’t stick.<\/p>\n

A CBS News analysis of Census data found the typical full-time worker earned $1,250 a week in the first half of 2026. That’s up $342 from the year before the pandemic, a raise<\/a> of 38%.<\/p>\n

But prices<\/a> climbed nearly as fast. Consumer costs rose 30% over the same seven years, swallowing about 80% of the typical worker’s raise. What survives is roughly $70 more a week to spend in today’s dollars. That’s about 6% over seven years or a gain of less than 1% a year.<\/p>\n

Over seven years, $70 more a week is a small gain placed in the context of a typical family’s budget: about one gasoline<\/a> fill-up for an SUV or less than one-third of a single week’s grocery run for a cost-conscious family of four.<\/p>\n

That gap explains a contradiction millions of households felt<\/a> across the Trump, Biden and second Trump administrations: raises that never seemed to change the household budget.<\/p>\n

Inflation peaked in June 2022, when prices jumped 9% over the prior year, the sharpest increase since 1981.<\/p>\n

The gains were not evenly shared. Across the occupations CBS News could measure reliably, roughly half of the workers beat inflation, about a quarter came out about even, and the other quarter fell behind \u2013 even if their paychecks were rising.<\/p>\n

The size and pattern of increases sometimes ran counter to what people might expect. Pay for the lowest-earning tenth of workers rose 9.4% even after the big inflation hit. For the typical worker it was 5.9%. For the best-paid quarter, just 2.6% \u2014 the further up the pay scale, the smaller the gain.<\/p>\n

Two familiar jobs<\/a> show how wide the gap got. Registered nurses and police officers both earn about $80,000 a year. Over these seven years, police pay rose nearly 10% after inflation. But nurses’ pay barely moved when rising prices are factored in.<\/p>\n

Some of the biggest gains came among traditionally lower-paid occupations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nursing and home health aides, childcare workers and waiters all beat inflation by more than 10% in the seven-year period. For waiters, part of that is arithmetic: tips are a percentage of the bill, so when menu prices jumped, tips often rose with them.<\/p>\n

Teachers went the other way. Elementary and middle school teachers fell about 5% after considering inflation; high school teachers slightly more.<\/p>\n

So did the people delivering our mail. Letter carriers lost about 10% in buying power. In January\u00a02025, they voted down a tentative national contract by more than two to one, their union’s first rejection since 1978, after being offered base wage increases of about 1.3% a year.<\/p>\n

A gain that small still counts as unusually good over the long haul. Adjusted for inflation, the typical worker’s pay rose 5.9% from 2019 to 2026, better than most seven-year stretches dating all the way back to 1979. Pay fell 3.6% after inflation in the decade after 1979 and rose just 0.3% across the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

\n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n

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