How Health Insurance Is Eating Your Raise

Wages and Prices with Fexingo: Cost of Living, Pay Raises, and Workers' Purchasing Power · May 24, 2026 · 8m · transcript

Lucas and Luna dig into the latest employment cost index data and find that while wages are growing at 3.4 percent annually, employer-paid health benefit costs are rising roughly 6 percent. They walk through why the ECI is the Fed's favorite wage measure, how benefit costs silently erode purchasing power, and what this means for workers who feel like their raise disappears before it hits their bank account. Featuring a close look at the gap between total compensation and take-home pay, plus why the bond market's ten-year breakeven inflation rate of 2.4 percent tells a different…