Has the average hourly wage kept up with prices? It depends which prices you count. Official CPI says one thing; a basket of the things a household can't avoid says another. Both are drawn from government data, and the gap between them is the argument about "real" inflation, made visible.
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Five BLS average-price series that nearly every household pays, weighted equally and combined geometrically: ground beef per pound, a dozen eggs, a gallon of regular gasoline, a kilowatt-hour of electricity, and the rent index. No substitution, no quality adjustment, no owner's-equivalent rent. It is deliberately crude; the point is to show what a stubbornly literal measure looks like next to the official one.
Monetary inflation in the rates view is M2 money-supply growth minus real GDP growth: the amount by which new money outran new output. Some economists treat this as the underlying rate that prices eventually catch up to; others say the link is loose. It's on the chart as a third yardstick, not a verdict.
Real wage is the nominal wage divided by a price measure. Under CPI it has risen modestly over most long windows; under the everyday basket it often hasn't. Which one matches your own experience is a fair question to ask.
Average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory workers, the official CPI, and the everyday basket, all rebased to 100 at the start year, plus the real wage computed against each. The rates view shows the same as annual percentage changes, with monetary inflation added. Hover for values; click a legend entry to hide a line.
Any single household. Wages vary enormously by region and job, and the basket ignores healthcare, tuition, childcare, and insurance, which have risen faster than almost anything here. It also can't settle the methodological argument; it only puts the two measures side by side.