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As I just noted, given the rise in pay for low wage workers over the last two years, as well as a variety of progressive government benefits, most people in the bottom fifth of the income distribution are almost certainly better off than they were before the pandemic. This doesn’t mean that plenty of families are not struggling, tens of millions are. But that was also true in 2019, before the pandemic hit.

If news outlets, like the Washington Post, are giving more coverage to struggling families today than they did before the pandemic, that is a result of their editorial policy, not a reflection of reality.