Marketplace reported on new findings that the average worker in the U.S. who stayed in their job between 2021 and 2024 saw their wages decline by 9% after inflation. It also found that this real wage decline — rather than inflation itself — is at the root of poor consumer sentiment. Tia Koonse, the policy director at the UCLA Labor Center, explains that if salaries go up but grocery prices go up more, a person’s real wage has gone down. “It's not rocket science, right? You gotta increase your wage to keep pace with inflation,” she said. Read more about UCLA in today’s Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and others.