Wages really are growing faster than inflation

A boon for workers, and for economic conspiracy theorists

It didn’t attract a ton of attention, but May of 2023 marked the first month since March of 2021 that annual wages rose faster over the past year than average prices,¹ and it feels like a big deal to me.

Macroeconomists and central bank staffers have their reasons for downplaying the significance of this, which we’ll get to later. But for most people, I …