Earnings staying ahead of inflation. The source data is from BLS.

Earnings growth has outpaced inflation this year and the average American's weekly paycheck now buys 1.6% more than in Jan, after falling 4.0% under Biden - what a difference a president makes... pic.twitter.com/bVOJ0NhDag

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) December 18, 2025

I think Biden was a failure, but I don't think that's what this chart is telling us. Looks like there was an upward trend in the latter part of the Biden administration and so far under Trump has been a continuation of that trend.

So it's not telling us that earnings are staying ahead of inflation under Trump?! Can you provide some data to show otherwise?

As far as Biden, he had the biggest tailwind of any president in American history coming out of a pandemic with companies opening up and millions of jobs coming back and yet wages did not keep pace with inflation his first year!

Jeeper79 said:

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I think Biden was a failure, but I don't think that's what this chart is telling us. Looks like there was an upward trend in the latter part of the Biden administration and so far under Trump has been a continuation of that trend.

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Even under that light, if you are going to give Presidents all the credit, Trump did 1.5x more in 11 months than Biden did in his last 3 years.

A 1% increase in month 1 of Trump is 1% more than -4% in month 48 of Biden....so-3%

It's telling us they're getting better, but still negative (behind).

The chart is just making statistical manuevering by re-zero'ing the Y when Trump starts.

Shift the orange start down to the blue end and the chart tells us wage increases suck vs inflation.

Sims said:

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A 1% increase in week 1 of Trump is 1% more than -4% in week 48 of Biden....so-3%

It's telling us they're getting better, but still negative (behind).

The chart is just making statistical manuevering by re-zero'ing the Y when Trump starts.

Shift the orange start down to the blue end and the chart tells us wage increases suck vs inflation.

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Biden's last 3 months was going sharply down, was it not?

Over 4 years, from Biden's absolute bottom to the top is about 1.25 percentage points.

Trump is at a 1.6 point delta in 1 year.

Yeah....and his last 32 were on a clear up trend. I loathe biden. It's data. I'm just answering a question.

Those last 3 months say otherwise.

That upward slope you see is all about the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 of Biden which was nothing more than the Gov pumping cash into the economy woth no real benefit.

BLS data was a right wing target because of its adjustment feature. The market knew this. Key components were very delayed. Data scientists and the market understood this and accounted for this in their models. Politicians used it for politics.

This is a good summary of what the market thought of the data.

https://www.ft.com/content/c90d704f-8efc-4870-a04a-5d0d6a637571

"Bond markets barely budged as economists and investors said missing data diminished the report's value......"We need to acknowledge that the data is a mess."

The market is up over 1.5% since CPI was released yesterday!