Latest / Wages and Prices with Fexingo: Cost of Living, Pay Raises, and Workers' Purchasing Power
Why Your Raise Is Beating Inflation But Not Utility Bills
Episode 47 of Wages and Prices with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna drill into a detail that wage-growth headlines miss: utilities. The CPI shelter index gets all the attention, but electricity, gas, and water costs have climbed nearly 9 percent over the past year, outpacing both average hourly earnings growth and headline CPI. Using May 2026 data — hourly earnings at $37.50, CPI at 4.2 percent annually — they show how a typical raise buys less discretionary power when fixed bills eat the gain. They walk through the breakdown: electricity up 6.8 percent year-over-year, piped gas up 12.4 percent…
The skinny
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