“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, 1984

Once again, the Democrats are touting the great economy, telling us that wage increases are now running at a greater rate than inflation.

Consumer prices up 3.1 percent from January 2023 to January 2024

February 22, 2024

Over the year ended January 2024, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 3.1 percent. Food prices rose 2.6 percent, while energy prices decreased 4.6 percent. Prices for all items less food and energy increased 3.9 percent from January 2023 to January 2024, compared with increases of 5.6 percent in the year ended January 2023 and 6.0 percent for the year ended January 2022.

3.1% is still higher than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2.0%, but not terrible, right. But, let’s do a bit of math. The January 2021 to January 2022 inflation rate for all items was 7.5%, from January 2022 to January 2023 it was 6.4%, and over the last year, it has been 3.1%.

$100 x 1.075 = $107.50, x 1.064 = $114.38, x 1.031 = $117.93.

Inflation is cumulative, and using the federal government’s own numbers, consumer prices for all items are 17.926% higher than they were when Joe Biden became President.

How about groceries, listed as “Food at home” by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s up 20.97%. Energy? That’s up 31.70%, despite the 4.6% decrease from January 2023 to 2024.

Why do I separate out food and energy? The Bureau of Labor Statistics, along with other government agencies, do that, because they describe them as too volatile, and don’t give a clear enough picture. But, more importantly to me, food and energy are the things people buy most frequently, as we have to eat every day, and fuel our vehicles every week, if not more often. Those are the things where people actually see inflation most often.

What about wages? Over the same period of time, wages have increased 17.087%, slightly less than the overall inflation rate, but significantly less than the inflation rates for the two things people have to buy most frequently. Prices for appliances may have grown at a significantly lesser rate, but how often do people actually buy washing machines or refrigerators?

Shelter? With wages having increased 5.0% over the past year, rental and mortgage expenses have jumped 5.7%.

Heather Long first came to my attention when she was an economics reporter for CNN. She wrote, on September 16, 2016:

Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%

by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT

Heather Long

Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is.The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.

It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.

But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those survey by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”

There’s more at the original.

I noted, at the time — in a post that is locked up, with so many others, in a file that’s stuck in my server somewhere when I got this site ‘fixed’ from some real technical problems — that what Americans believed, that unemployment was “actually at 9%, or higher,” was correct, if you looked at U-6 rather than the ‘official’ U-3 unemployment rate.

• U-1: Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
• U-2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
• U-3: U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
• U-4: Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
• U-5: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
• U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.

The August, 2016 U-6 rate was 9.6%, which I said was right in line with American’s perception of it.

Now it’s March of 2024, and the Democrats keep telling us, just like they did in 2016, that the economy is just fine, thank you very much. But while the issue is different, inflation rather than unemployment, the effect is the same: what the government tells us is the case is not what people see as reality when they go to the grocery store, or fill up their gasoline tanks. I’m hoping that the outcome in November is the same, that the Democratic presidential nominee is returned to the status of private citizen.