Inflation is an increase in price level. Who sets the prices? Corporations (or landlords). They may increase the prices either because their inputs are more expensive, or to pad their profits. But all the inputs, in the end, derive from someone's labor. There might genuinely be situations when more labor is required to achieve the same output (e.g. drought for agriculture, or mineral extraction got more difficult), but most of the time, the opposite is true - less labor is required to achieve the same output. If wages do not rise at the same pace as prices, somebody is pocketing that extra money
But we never see that inconvenient fact being mentioned...anywhere. Newspapers run headlines like "beef prices up X%", without the corollary - "and the price increase is pocketed by meat packing plant cartel". And it turns out, empirically, that's pretty much what's happening: Corporate profits drive 60% of inflation increases:
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/corporate-profits-drive-6...