DENVER (KDVR) — Inflation has only “eased” with spending categories that were the most dramatically inflated.
Thursday’s Consumer Price Index release said core inflation has gone up 6.6% since last September — the highest it has risen since 1982. Overall, inflation rose 8.2% since last year.
Economists made a distinction between so-called “core inflation” and everything else. Core inflation involves everything except food and energy. Food and energy prices don’t always swell and shrink the way they have in the last two years, but they are more volatile than other spending brackets, even in economically stable times.
Inflation has concerned economists and public officials for the last year, but hopes were high that it would be easing after interest rate hikes over the course of 2022. As gasoline prices fell from record highs, the public got a breather from one of the most visible inflationary pressures.
That was a false positive. Core inflation has continued and in some cases sped up.
Core inflation has been rolling steadily upward since the summer of 2020, with only a few spending categories making wild swings.
Core inflation has gone up 12.1% percent over the last two years. Since last year, most of the core inflation categories have risen more gently than those of energy and food. Core measurements have risen between 3.7% and 14.6% in the last 12 months.
It’s energy and food prices that have bounced around.
Energy and food prices have risen much more dramatically — between 8.5% and 58.1%. They have also fallen on average in the last month, while core inflation items have risen.