US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by wing-_-nuts on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @10:40AM (#48109004)

I will say, this past inflation spike has completely broken the assumptions I had from 1970s economics that employers would raise their 'cost of living' raises to keep pace with inflation. My employer seems to think 2.5% is fine, as they've done it multiple years in recent past with only one extraordinary year netting 4%. I am now very skeptical of any so called 'wage price spiral'

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by WarmWash on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @11:15AM (#48109563)

That's why macro economic data is based on nationally reported data from tens of thousands employers rather than just one company.

We can look at the data and clearly see the inflection point where wages started rising faster once the pandemic began.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECIWAG

And looking at real wages, we can see that wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by b40d-48b2-979e on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @01:02PM (#48111041)

    wages have actually outpaced inflation since ~2015

Yeah.. just ignore the 30 years where it was basically stagnant.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by WarmWash on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @02:56PM (#48112718)

The driver of real wages is the economic level of the whole country, which moves at a pretty slow pace (if at all) for an advanced economy. Many jobs today pay around the same as they did 30 years ago, because dollars (currency) aren't a measure of true value, and lots if not most jobs produce the same relative value today as they did 30 years ago.

To put that more plainly, lower class, middle class, and upper class defining jobs pretty much stay the same.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by disgruntledphd2 on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @11:36AM (#48109851)

> I am now very skeptical of any so called 'wage price spiral'

The wage-price spiral now happens when people move. I've definitely noticed that average salaries for my role (data person) have increased singificantly since 2020 or so.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by triceratops on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @10:53AM (#48109191)

Employers pay you the least amount of money it takes to keep you from working somewhere else. It's always been true and it probably always will be.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by alistairSH on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @10:58AM (#48109287)

Employers will increase your wages just enough to keep you from leaving.

With structural disincentives to leaving (medical coverage in the US), that is almost always a less-than-inflation amount.

Do employers even call it a COL increase any more? My employer "rebranded" the annual raises as "merit increases" many years ago.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by kccqzy on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @06:11PM (#48115285)

All of my employers, current and past, have or had only merit increases. COL increases are unheard of.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by wing-_-nuts on Wednesday May 13, 2026 @10:47AM (#48122662)

How big are your merit raises, typically?

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by kccqzy on Wednesday May 13, 2026 @11:13AM (#48123011)

Typically around 7%.

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Re:US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Ira... by ajmurmann on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @10:48AM (#48109132)

Nobody gives you cost of living increases. That's not how a market works. You get cost of LABOR increases. These are related but only indirectly.

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