Tag: Consumer price index (CPI)

Policymakers now expect only one rate cut in 2024

It was a double-whammy Wednesday for economic-data enthusiasts. During the morning of June 12, 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its latest inflation figures. The news was relatively good, showing that inflation rose 3.3% in the year to May 2024 – less than some analysts had expected. A few hours later, the Federal Reserve […]

Latest inflation figures are good news – even if they give a lot of people heartburn

The U.S. economy is slowing, but not crashing. In the dismal science, this is what counts as good news. That’s the message I took away from the latest inflation data, released May 15, 2024, which showed U.S. consumer prices rising 3.4% in the 12 months to April 2024. This is down slightly from the 3.5% […]

Fed likely to stay the course on interest rate hike as inflation ticks up but gas prices ease

The Federal Reserve received mixed news in the latest data on U.S. inflation as it mulls another rate hike. Consumer prices rose 8.3% in August from a year earlier, data released on Sept. 13, 2022, shows. While this pace is down from the 8.5% annual gain experienced in July, it’s still higher than what some […]

Rural Americans aren’t included in inflation figures – and for them, the cost of living may be rising faster

When the Federal Reserve convenes at the end of January 2023 to set interest rates, it will be guided by one key bit of data: the U.S. inflation rate. The problem is, that stat ignores a sizable chunk of the country – rural America. Currently sitting at 6.5%, the rate of inflation is still high, […]

Swelling grocery bills are pummeling the poorest – who spend over a quarter of their incomes on food

CC BY-ND The cost of eggs and bread is soaring – a trend that’s particularly punishing for the poorest Americans. Average food prices climbed an annualized rate of 10.4% in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on July 13, 2022. The gains were driven primarily by the cost of groceries, which jumped the most […]

What you need to know about inflation

Inflation is one of the most pressing political and economic issues of the moment, but there are many misconceptions about how inflation is measured, where it comes from and how it impacts the average person. In June, inflation in Canada reached a 40-year high of 8.1 per cent. While there are signs inflation may be […]

The Federal Reserve and the art of navigating a soft landing … when economic data sends mixed signals

With inflation easing and the U.S. economy cooling, is the Federal Reserve done raising interest rates? After all, gently bringing down the trajectory of prices without crashing the economy was the central bank’s objective when it began jacking up rates over a year ago. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of an economy’s output, expanded […]

Inflation report is a mixed bag – an economist explains why some items are rising faster than others

Economists worried about soaring inflation got some good news to start the year: The rate of inflation has eased. The first report card of 2023 on consumer prices, released on Jan. 12, showed that the overall cost of goods and services decelerated to an annual pace of 6.5% in December, the slowest in over a […]

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