• Rates of inflation in the United States are still increasing after hitting a 40-year high in January 2022.
  • The Consumer Price Index for All Consumers (CPI-U) has increased by nearly 8% in a year.
  • The increase in inflation caused by the short-term effects of the pandemic is no longer a statistical anomaly.

Consumer prices in the United States continued to rise in February of 2022 after inflation had hit a 40-year high in January. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was up 7.9 percent compared to a year ago, while the core index excluding more volatile food and energy prices increased 6.4 percent over the last 12 months. The January and February readings were the highest since February and January of 1982, respectively, fueling fears that inflation is out of control. The sharp increase is despite the fact that the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not fully felt in the current release yet.

When inflation spiked in the spring/early summer of 2021, it was largely due to the so-called base effect, reversing the pandemic’s cooling effect on consumer prices a year earlier. At the onset of the pandemic, prices had taken a dive due to a sudden drop in consumer spending and fuel demand before slowly climbing back to their pre-pandemic trajectory over the summer and fall. Due to that initial dip in consumer prices, year-over-year comparisons were always going to be exaggerated for a while, but that is no longer the case.

Back in April 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee said that it was going to aim for "inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time" before raising interest rates to achieve a long-term average of 2 percent inflation. And while it remained unclear how the committee defines “moderately above” and “for some time”, it's increasingly clear that the 2-percent goal is in danger.

To eliminate the short-term effects of the pandemic, we calculated the average annual inflation rate over a moving three-year period, yielding a curve that fluctuated around 2 percent for a long time, until it took off last summer. In February, the three-year average inflation rate climbed to 4.3 percent, clearly indicating that the latest spike in consumer prices is more than just a statistical blip and should be taken seriously.

A chart showing inflation in the U.S.
This chart shows the year-over-year change of the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers in the US.
Image: Statista
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