Did your paycheck beat inflation? It’s a toss-up in California

I could tell you that California paychecks kept pace with inflation – but that would be missing the bigger picture.

My trusty spreadsheet looked at federal employment data that’s a personal favorite: a quarterly report derived from unemployment insurance records. Year-end 2023 was compared with 2019 – that’s just before coronavirus upended the economy – to find inflation’s winners and losers as far as wages are concerned.

Let’s start with the ugly fact that inflation nationwide rose 19.5% in these four years...