According to a recent study, rising inflation costs the average American household $296.45 in additional expenses.
According to data obtained by a news agency, Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics, came up with the figure after the latest Labor Department statistics revealed that consumer prices rose 7.9% in February.
Sweet compared average household expenditure in February to what would have been spent in 2018 and 2019 if inflation had remained at 2.1 percent.
The CPI increased 2.5 percent in just six months, a stunning rate of rising, with a spike of.8 percent in February alone, shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. Energy rose by 3.5 percent in February following a 0.9 percent gain in each of the two prior months.
In February, inflation reached a 40-year high, owing in part to rising gas prices. According to data issued Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consumer price index increased 7.9% on an annual basis. Month over month, inflation increased by 0.8 percent.
The year-over-year increase compares to a 7.5 percent increase in January. It’s the fastest rise since February 1982, when inflation peaked at 7.6%.
Almost every category of goods and services increased in price from January to February. Gas prices increased by 6.6 percent, accounting for nearly a third of all price increases. Other than during a pandemic-induced price surge two years ago, grocery expenditures increased by 1.4 percent, the largest one-month increase since 1990. Fruit and vegetable prices increased by 2.3 percent, the highest monthly increase since 2010.
For most Americans, inflation is surpassing pay increases. According to AAA, the February figures were gathered before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent gas prices to a record high of $4.31 on Thursday. The Biden administration has blamed Putin for rising gas prices on numerous occasions.