You aren’t crazy. The reason you feel like your paycheck isn’t going as far is that it isn’t.
Because of Trump’s chaotic tariffs and the Iran war, inflation has outpaced wage growth for 6 months in a row.
While the price of everything else is going up, your wages can’t keep up.
Here's the key problem...inflation has wiped out wage gains for 6 months now.
It's a financial squeeze.
Americans are trying to work more hours to make up for it, but many are still falling behind.
Many people are worse off. As BLS wrote,
In the past year, "real average hourly earnings decreased 0.7%. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.6% increase in the average workweek resulted in a 0.1% decrease in real average weekly earnings."