Raise vs inflation calculator
Whether a raise kept up with prices: your raise after inflation, and what you would need to earn to stand still.
Uses the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted). Your own costs can rise faster or slower than the average; taxes are not included.
How it’s calculated
Prices rose by the ratio of the Consumer Price Index in the month your new pay started to the index in the month your old pay started. Pay needed to keep up is your old pay times that ratio. Your raise after inflation compares your new pay with that amount.
The index is the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted, updated each month after the BLS release.
Example
A raise from $60,000 to $62,400 is 4.0%. If the index rose from 315.0 to 323.0 over the same months (about 2.5%), keeping up needed $61,524, so the raise is about 1.4% after inflation, $876 ahead.