Inflation Returns

Inflation Returns

November 16, 2021

Inflation is back and worse than it's been in decades.  Consumer prices rose 0.9% in October and are up 6.2% in the last twelve months.  Two more months of moderate increases, and the CPI will be 6.5% in 2021, the highest inflation since 1982.

As a result, after surging in the earliest stages of the pandemic, "real" (inflation-adjusted) average hourly wages have been trending downward since peaking in April 2020 and are down 1.2% in the past year.  In fact, real average hourly wages are up only 1.5% since February 2020 (pre-COVID) versus a gain of 2.3% in the twenty months before COVID arrived.

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