The best way to fix Americans’ cost-of-living problem is to give workers bigger raises, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week.

The problem: That solution looks broken, too. The US job market has been stagnant in recent months, and paycheck growth has been falling steadily for more than three years. We’ll get a clearer picture Tuesday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the delayed October and November jobs reports.

Affordability has remained issue No. 1 in poll after poll, despite more than a year of relatively normal inflation and over two years of wage growth outpacing price hikes. That’s because Americans haven’t yet adjusted to the price shock from a few years ago, when inflation surged to a four-decade high.