Source: www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
Good afternoon, because the title of the post states, roughly 2/3 of consumer spending goes into services and as we’ll see below, inflation remains to be running rampant! Things like housing, healthcare, insurance, education, streaming services (for instance HBO Max just raised their prices today effective immediately), etc. are all still on the rise.
CPI for services: jumped 0.6% month-to-month and seven.5% year-over-year:
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAS
Digging into housing and food deeper:
“Rent of primary residence” (accounts for 7.5% of total CPI) spiked by 0.8% month-to-month and by 8.3% year-over-year, the very best since 1982. It tracks actual rents paid:
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEHA
“Owner’s equivalent rent of residences” (what folks who own homes imagine they’ll get in rent and accounts for twenty-four.2% of total CPI) jumped by 0.8% month-to-month and by 7.5% year-over-year, the very best it has ever been in the info:
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEHC#0
“Food away from home” (think restaurants) jumped .4% for the month-to-month and eight.3% year-over-year:
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEFV#0
CPI for “food at home” (food from grocery stores): up .2% month-to-month and 11.8% year-over-year–the tenth month in a row of DOUBLE DIGIT year-over-year increases:
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF11#0
As a result of this ‘adjustment’, CPI for medical insurance ‘dropped’ by 3.4% month-to-month, with these adjustments reducing the year-over-year rate of medical insurance CPI from 28% in September to 7.9% in December….
