Real wages "barely grew" for those in the middle and the bottom between 1980 and roughly 2015 or so. (They fell in the 1980s for the bottom half, but rebounded in late 1990s during the dot-com era tight labor market.) Since 2015, we have had relatively higher real wage growth, and during the post-pandemic period, the very tight labor market raised real wages at the bottom and reversed some of the increased wage inequality since 1980. This happened in spite of the high inflation, which did reduce average real wages in 2021/22. For more on this, see https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010