Wage growth minus inflation — the only pay raise that counts. Atlanta Fed wage-growth tracker, average hourly earnings and real median weekly earnings, each netted against the CPI and against this site's daily gauge, with the gap charted through time.
The politics of inflation live on this page: a hot labor market can raise pay faster than prices (real gains) or lag them (the squeeze). Netting wages against the real-time gauge instead of the lagged CPI shows the squeeze or the relief months earlier.
A raise only counts after inflation. This page nets wage growth against two inflation readings — the official CPI, which lands about six weeks after the wages it is compared with, and the Nowflation CPI Gauge, measured today — and reports the difference as real wage growth. The arithmetic is exact rather than a subtraction: real change = (1 + wage growth) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1.
The Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker follows the same people twelve months apart, so it is not distorted by who is hired or laid off; the median, three-month average, is 3.9% for September 2026 (4.2% a year earlier). Average hourly earnings of private employees, from the jobs report, is the broad headline figure: +3.0% year over year (September 2026); it moves with the mix of jobs as well as with pay. Indeed's posted-wage index measures advertised pay in job listings — the marginal wage for a new hire — at 2.5% (August 2026). The Employment Cost Index, the Fed's preferred measure because it holds the job mix fixed, is up +3.4% (April 2026). Real median weekly earnings, the BLS's own inflation-adjusted series, were $378 a week in 1982–84 dollars (April 2026).
| Wage measure | Nominal growth | vs Nowflation CPI Gauge | vs official CPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Fed tracker (September 2026) | 3.9% | +0.44% real (Gauge 3.45%) | +0.19% real (CPI 3.7%, September 2026) |
| Average hourly earnings (September 2026) | +3.0% | -0.41% real | -0.65% real |
| Indeed posted wages (August 2026) | 2.5% | -0.96% real | -1.20% real |
Matched to the same month rather than to today, the Gauge read 3.16% in September 2026, giving real growth of +0.72% on the Atlanta Fed measure, against +1.32% a year earlier. Positive real growth means paychecks are winning; negative is the squeeze. Netting against the Gauge instead of the lagged CPI shows a turn months earlier, because the Gauge carries this month's rents and pump prices while the CPI still carries last year's leases.
Wages are both a cost and a demand: services priced mostly on labor (the supercore slice) rise when pay does, and households with rising real pay keep spending without borrowing. A labor market that raises pay faster than prices is the benign outcome; one that raises it faster than productivity is the one the Fed reads as a wage–price loop. Sources: Atlanta Fed, Indeed Hiring Lab, BLS via FRED, the Nowflation daily index.