How’s the Economy? Biden Sees a Boom. Many Americans Don’t.

The ingredients include a tight labor market, where job openings far outnumber job seekers and employers are being forced to raise wages for workers in retail stores and restaurants. And they include robust government aid programs over the last two years that have helped American workers build up savings, pay down debt and avoid the threat of eviction or foreclosure even amid economic hardship.

Officials point to estimates by Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, that find the lowest-paid 70 percent of American workers have seen wage increases over the last two years even after accounting for inflation. They say the raises and pandemic aid programs, including direct checks to low- and middle-income households and an expanded tax credit for parents that has been delivered in monthly payments, have given typical households an inflation-adjusted increase in how much money they have to spend.

Administration aides read those statistics, and some survey data like Americans’ belief that jobs are plentiful, as evidence that Americans are happier with their economic situations than would be expected from reading and watching what they call unbalanced coverage of the economy in the news media. Cable news networks mentioned “inflation” more than 10 times as often last month than they have in a typical month since 2009, according to data from the Internet Archive analyzed by the GDELT Project. Since July, they have mentioned “inflation” more often than “unemployment” for the first time since 2009.

“I have never seen a stronger labor market than the one we’re seeing today,” Jared Bernstein, a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview. “It is accomplishing something that is at the absolute core of Biden-nomics, which is providing bargaining clout to middle- and low-wage workers at a level that we haven’t seen in decades.”

But other measures suggest workers are correctly perceiving a slowdown or reversal in their real wage gains. An analysis by Jason Furman of Harvard University, a former top economist for President Barack Obama, shows most workers have seen slowing inflation-adjusted wage gains — or even wage declines — that have worsened as price increases heated up this year. Friday’s Consumer Price Index underscored the point, showing surging prices for rent, cars, gasoline and household staples like cereal and eggs.

“The real economy is doing quite well both in absolute terms and somewhat well relative to expectations,” Mr. Furman said in an email. “Inflation and real wages, however, are terrible.”

The president has in recent weeks painted a bifurcated picture of the economy in speeches and news releases. He promotes what he calls historic progress on several measures. But he quickly turns to acknowledging the sticker shock that families have experienced at the grocery store, the gasoline pump and a variety of online shopping sites.