Most of that increase in spending is driven by housing costs, which have surged, Zandi told CNN in an email on Friday. He added that families are also spending more at the grocery store; on buying, maintaining and insuring vehicles and on recreational services like cable.
Of course, paychecks have also grown over the past two years — but not by as much as the cost of living
Median weekly earnings for full time workers were $899 in Q1 2019, $1107 in Q2 2023.
That’s $3895/mo to $4797/mo, so the median full time worker is earning an extra $902/mo in that time span.
I don’t know how he was calculating “typical household” or what quarter he was working with, my point is that the net dollar amount is pretty misleading for an article headline. It sounds like the typical household is $700 worse off, but they definitely are not.
We have an appropriate measure for answering this question, real wages. It’s below pre-pandemic numbers but it’s catching up as wages are currently rising faster than inflation.