Over the years, we made more than 100 posts about the economy. Including several this year. Although the U.S. economy is doing better in 2021, there are growing concerns about price increases. Nonetheless, such increases are not the same across the board. To understand more, we look at current inflation rates by product category.
As defined by Economics Help: “Inflation means an increase in the cost of living as the price of goods and services rise.”
A Mixed Bag: Current Inflation Rates by Product Category
Just last week, Josh Bivens and
They report that:
For the first time in years, talk of inflation fears has taken center stage in mainstream economic discourse. Inflation, an economic measure for increased prices in goods and services, accelerated noticeably in recent months, climbing 5.4 percent in July over the previous year. This spurred calls for the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, to “cool off” the economy by raising interest rates. But doing so could cause a lot of collateral damage by stalling the still-nascent economic recovery.
So far, the inflationary burst of 2021 has been overwhelmingly driven by a narrow group of sectors that were deeply affected by the shock of Covid-19 and last year’s accompanying shutdowns. In July, some of these sectors (used cars in particular) experienced a big deceleration in inflation, bolstering the argument — led by the Fed chair Jerome Powell — that the inflationary surge might be “transitory,” or fade quickly on its own.
These charts show the year-over-year change in prices of hundreds of products tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
First, the products with increasing prices. Then, the products with declining or flat prices.
One thought on “%1$s”