James Ellars Official

If you’ve felt a little whiplash reading the news about the economy lately, you’re not alone. On paper, things look solid. The country added 172,000 jobs in May, and unemployment held steady at 4.3%. By most measures, that’s a healthy job market — the kind we’d normally cheer. And yet, when we fill the tank or push a cart down the grocery aisle, something doesn’t add up. The good news on jobs just isn’t reaching our wallets.

The culprit is prices. Wholesale costs — the prices businesses pay before goods ever reach us — climbed at their fastest pace in years this past month, pushed higher by rising energy costs tied to the conflict with Iran. When it costs more to fuel a delivery truck or run a factory, those costs tend to roll downhill, and we’re usually the ones standing at the bottom. That’s why a paycheck that looks bigger on paper can still feel smaller at the register.

Here’s the part worth holding onto, though: the people we count on still have work. Our neighbors are getting hired. Businesses are still adding jobs even while they navigate higher costs. That’s not nothing. A country with a steady job market has the foundation it needs to weather a rough stretch on prices — and history tells us these energy-driven spikes often ease once the underlying shock settles down.

It helps to remember that we’ve ridden out tighter seasons before. The frustration so many of us feel right now is real and reasonable, and it’s okay to name it. But the same resilience showing up in those hiring numbers shows up at our kitchen tables too — in the budgeting, the swapping of recipes, the looking out for one another.