U.S. Inflation Surpasses 9 Percent

Consumer prices in the United States continued to rise in June. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was up 9.1 percent compared to a year ago, while the core index excluding more volatile food and energy prices increased 5.9 percent over the last 12 months. The June reading was the highest since November 1981, fueling fears that inflation is out of control.

When inflation started spiking in the spring/early summer of 2021, it was largely due to the so-called base effect, reversing the pandemic’s cooling effect on consumer prices a year earlier. At the onset of the pandemic, prices had taken a dive due to a sudden drop in consumer spending and fuel demand before slowly climbing back to their pre-pandemic trajectory over the summer and fall. Due to that initial dip in consumer prices, year-over-year comparisons were always going to be exaggerated for a while, but that is no longer the case.

Back in April 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee said that it was going to aim for "inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time" before raising interest rates to achieve a long-term average of 2 percent inflation. And while it remained unclear how the committee defines “moderately above” and “for some time”, it’s increasingly clear that the 2-percent goal has moved out of scope even after the Fed has tightened rates.

To eliminate the short-term effects of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we calculated the average annual inflation rate over a moving three-year period, yielding a curve that fluctuated around 2 percent for a long time, until it took off last summer. In June, the three-year average inflation rate climbed to 5 percent, far beyond the 2-percent goal.

Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/18344/year-over-year-change-of-the-consumer-price-index-for-all-urban-consumers/?utm_source=Statista+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0098c57ebe-All_InfographTicker_daily_COM_PM_KW28_2022_Tu_COPY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_662f7ed75e-0098c57ebe-315604677