Inflation Reaches 4.2% as Prices Outpace Paychecks |
Inflation
Inflation Reaches 4.2% as Prices Outpace Paychecks
The Iran war and Trump's tariffs are pushing prices higher, and neither will be easy to undo.
Eric Boehm | 6.10.2026 1:15 PM
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(Illustration: Adani Samat/Envato)
There is a lot of political discourse about "affordability," but the meaning of the term can be difficult to pin down.
Is it just a jargony way of talking about high nominal prices? Is it really all about housing? Could it be, as President Donald Trump has suggested, a "con job" invented by Democrats to make his administration look bad? Different people will have different answers, and I suspect we will continue to debate those questions through the midterms and into the 2028 presidential cycle.
But probably the most straightforward way to think about the "affordability" question is the relationship between two figures published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): average hourly earnings and the........