Just in case you thought that inflation was a brief blip on the economic radar under the Biden administration, we have the unhappy privilege of telling you that, well, it's not:
Employers' compensation costs were rising quickly at the start of the year, and the price of consumer goods continued its surge in March, according to new data that showed inflation pressures continued in the U.S. through the winter...
The Employment Cost Index, a measure of how much employers pay for their workers' wages and benefits, was up 1.4% in the first quarter and 4.5% over the last year. The personal consumption expenditures price index was up 0.9% in March, or 0.3% excluding volatile food and energy.
Ahh, if only we could exclude "food and energy" from our budgets.
Price hikes, meanwhile, are gonna happen in ways you may never have anticipated:
The ECI shows that employers are paying substantially more to their workers, suggesting that wage pressures are building that will eventually cause companies to raise the prices they charge consumers.
The index incorporates both wages (up 1.2% in the first quarter alone) and benefit costs (up 1.8%), thus capturing the full extent of what companies must pay to attract and retain workers
- The 4.5% year-over-year rise in the index is the highest it has been in data that dates to 2002 and was higher than the 4.3% analysts had expected.
Not good!
I wonder if the unthinkable trillions of dollars we printed and circulated throughout the economy over the last two years had anything to do with this??
Naaah... no way. Better print up a fresh round of stimulus, that'll take care of things!
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