Yeah and if wages were already significantly worse than inflation, and continued to stay below it, then peoples buying power decreased even more. It didn’t decrease faster than it was, but it still decreased from what it had been, making them worse off. Looking at 5 year trends foesnt really matter if theres never a true upward swing and its just a consistent downslide. You can say ‘yeah but here in this spot you slowed down slightly’, but the person is still closer to the bottom than they’ve ever been.