April 12, 2023
It looks like inflation is going in the right direction.
Down.
Today, the report that measures average inflation across all sectors in the entire country found inflation in march was 5% higher than it was in March of 2022. I know you’re thinking – Lisa! That’s still high which it is. But when you look at February, inflation was at 6% year over year. So it decreased a whole percentage point in one month. And certainly, is down from last summer’s high of 9.1%.
But as I just said, things are still expensive…especially housing. Rents keep going up. In March they were more than 8% (8.2%) more expensive than March of 2022 and about half a percent more (0.6%) than February.
Overall food costs seem to be stabilizing. There was no change in the average cost of all food between February and March. But food was still 8.5% more expensive than it was in March of 2022. Eggs were almost 11% cheaper in March of 2023 than they were in February (-10.9%). But still up about 36% over March of 2022.
What’s causing the decline? Energy and gas. In march gasoline was almost 17.5% (17.4%) less than it was in March of 2022.
Read the March Consumer Price Index report here.
