(Bloomberg) — Has inflation really eroded Americans’ wage gains in the pandemic? Some economists at the Federal Reserve say that no.

According to Tuesday’s blog posting from the Dallas Fed, even though inflation of decades has impacted earnings, there is still a net positive effect on the last two years. After adjusting for the changes in the composition of the workforce, researchers found that wages increased during this period. 

“Despite recent negative real wage growth, workers have experienced real wage gains over the two years of the pandemic,” researchers Sean Howard, Robert Rich and Joseph Tracy said in the post.

These findings are the result of a Twitter dispute (NYSE:) that occurred between Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate economist and Jason Furman. Furman is a Harvard Kennedy School professor who was once President Barack Obama’s economic advisor. Krugman said in December real wages had risen since the pre-pandemic period, but Furman said they’d declined about 1%. 

According to Fed economists, the reality is more complex. Researchers used average hourly earnings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report, which jumped 5.7% in January from a year ago. 

Also, they took into account consumer price index which was a critical measure of inflation. It reached an all-time high of 4.7% in January. According to the BLS, wages adjusted for inflation fell 1.7% in January on an annual basis.

Research included composition effects in order to show how workers changed during the pessimistic job churn. Because if workers are paid more than they earn, this can have a negative impact on their compensation.

Inflation skyrocketed and real wages dropped 0.1% when you account for these shifts. According to the results, wage growth in 2019 was closer than 2% when the CPI stood at about five times the current level.

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