[wing-_-nuts]

I will say, this past inflation spike has completely broken the assumptions I had from 1970s economics that employers would raise their 'cost of living' raises to keep pace with inflation. My employer seems to think 2.5% is fine, as they've done it multiple years in recent past with only one extraordinary year netting 4%. I am now very skeptical of any so called 'wage price spiral'

[WarmWash]

That's why macro economic data is based on nationally reported data from tens of thousands employers rather than just one company.

We can look at the data and clearly see the inflection point where wages started rising faster once the pandemic began.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECIWAG

And looking at real wages, we can see that wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

[b40d-48b2-979e]

    wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015

Yeah.. just ignore the 30 years where it was basically stagnant.

[WarmWash]

The driver of real wages is the economic level of the whole country, which moves at a pretty slow pace (if at all) for an advanced economy. Many jobs today pay around the same as they did 30 years ago, because dollars (currency) aren't a measure of true value, and lots if not most jobs produce the same relative value today as they did 30 years ago.

To put that more plainly, lower class, middle class, and upper class defining jobs pretty much stay the same.

[alistairSH]

Employers will increase your wages just enough to keep you from leaving.

With structural disincentives to leaving (medical coverage in the US), that is almost always a less-than-inflation amount.

Do employers even call it a COL increase any more? My employer "rebranded" the annual raises as "merit increases" many years ago.

[kccqzy]

All of my employers, current and past, have or had only merit increases. COL increases are unheard of.

[wing-_-nuts]

How big are your merit raises, typically?

[kccqzy]

Typically around 7%.

[triceratops]

Employers pay you the least amount of money it takes to keep you from working somewhere else. It's always been true and it probably always will be.

[disgruntledphd2]

> I am now very skeptical of any so called 'wage price spiral'

The wage-price spiral now happens when people move. I've definitely noticed that average salaries for my role (data person) have increased singificantly since 2020 or so.

[ajmurmann]

Nobody gives you cost of living increases. That's not how a market works. You get cost of LABOR increases. These are related but only indirectly.