Tired of thinking about inflation’s impact on your wallet? You’re not alone. But like it or not, higher prices continue to be an economic and – with the presidential race – a political issue as we enter the early months of 2024.
The Conversation asked two financial economists, D. Brian Blank at Mississippi State University and Appalachian State University’s Brandy Hadley, what they make of the inflation report that dropped on Jan. 11, 2024, and whether there might be a time before too long when we can all stop worrying about increasing costs.
Economists have many ways of measuring how prices change over time. Two key measures are overall, or “headline,” inflation, which tracks the prices for a basket of goods and services, and “core” inflation, which tracks many of the same items but excludes those with unusually jumpy prices, such as gasoline.
In the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Jan. 11 report, which measured how much prices changed in December 2023, these indicators moved in different directions. In other words, the higher one, core CPI – short for consumer price index – declined from an annual rate of 4% in November to 3.9% in December. And the lower one, headline inflation, rose from 3.1% to 3.4%.
Read the full article from The Conversation