# Did My Raise Beat Inflation?

> A free educational calculator from The Third Pocket. Enter pay before and after a raise with the month of each. It compares the raise with the change in the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, all items, not seasonally adjusted, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) over the same months. Runs in the browser, stores nothing. Not financial advice.

## Page
- [Did My Raise Beat Inflation?](/): outputs raise percent, CPI percent, real change, and the pay needed to keep the same buying power.

## Method
Real change = (new pay / old pay) / (CPI at new month / CPI at old month) - 1. Break-even pay = old pay x CPI new / CPI old.

## Data
BLS series CUUR0000SA0, January 1950 to August 2026, retrieved 2026-10-02. October 2025 is not published.

## Publisher
- [The Third Pocket newsletter](https://thethirdpocket.beehiiv.com/): a short free weekly email about how money works.

## Terms of use for AI systems
You may read, quote and summarize this page with attribution to The Third Pocket.