These income gains are inflation adjusted, and about half the entire weight of most inflation indexes is just housing, education, and health care costs: https:

These income gains are inflation adjusted, and about half the entire weight of most inflation indexes is just housing, education, and health care costs: https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt Even if housing costs have gone up more than overall inflation, other things have fallen, and OVERALL inflation rate is the best rough measure of "cost of living". There's some disagreement around whether we should use CPI-U, CPI-W, or PCE — CPI-W underweights housing, for eg — but importantly, the median income has increased since 1981 regardless of the choice of index. The median total compensation has increased since WW2 regardless of the choice of index.