Fact-check: Biden claim on take-home pay rising doesn’t account for prior inflation

Our weekly check-in with the Texas Truth-O-Meter.

By Louis Jacobson, PolitiFactJanuary 25, 2023 10:30 am,

From PolitiFact:

President Joe Biden on Jan. 12 faced reporter questions about the discovery of classified documents at his think tank’s office and his Delaware home. But he aimed instead to tout a positive development on an issue that has bedeviled his presidency: inflation.

“You know, and as inflation is coming down, take-home pay for workers is going up,” Biden said. “Workers’ wages are higher now than they were seven months ago, adjusted for inflation.”

Wage increases have outpaced inflation over the past two quarters. However, wages had fallen significantly behind inflation before that, and the recent improvements have not yet dug out of that hole.

Raw wages, unadjusted for inflation, have risen every quarter of Biden’s presidency, and generally at higher rates than wages rose under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

But once you adjust for inflation, many of these gains disappear. Real wages — that is, inflation-adjusted wages — fell or were unchanged during the first six quarters of Biden’s presidency.

In the past two quarters, however, real wages turned a corner. …

Read the full story at PolitiFact, and listen to an interview with PolitiFact Texas’ Nusaiba Mizan in the audio player above.

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