I think his point is that while a 5% raise and 5% inflation should be a wash, since you now pay slightly more taxes than before your pay after taxes is slightly less value than before.
It's still very misleading to say "wage gains aren't good" though - the problem is not that you got a 5% raise, it's that inflation is 5% so you need a slightly-higher-than-inflation raise to keep up. If you didn't get a 5% raise you'd just be even worse off.
