In June 2024, Joe Biden’s reelection marketing campaign precisely claimed that core inflation within the U.S. was at its lowest since April 2021.
Because the 2024 U.S. presidential election marketing campaign gathered momentum in June, President Joe Biden defended his report by saying inflation had slowed to its lowest stage since April 2021 and meals costs had dropped:
The White Home launched a statement to that effect on June 20, 2024:
On this submit, we present that grocery inflation is, actually, manner down from its latest peak, some grocery costs have fallen, and since wage progress has been robust, grocery buying energy is up.
As we’ll see, these claims are true, although they require a bit extra context.
As Biden asserted and as we’ve covered before, the consumer price index in Could 2024 was 3.3% larger than a yr earlier, which was decrease than the speed of increase of wages of 4.1% in the identical interval.
The inflation price additionally remained between 3.0% and three.7% for 13 months since Could 2023, considerably decrease than the 4.2% of April 2021.
The price of groceries, too, had stayed flat since February 2024, even falling in April 2024, in response to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Within the 12 months resulting in Could 2024, grocery costs rose 1.0%, way more slowly than core inflation:
(BLS)
Biden was evaluating the present financial scenario with what it was earlier in his time period in workplace, however taking a broader view revealed that whereas costs had been rising extra slowly in 2024 than in 2021, absolute costs shot up within the first yr of Biden’s mandate. They soared in methods not seen because the early Eighties, when inflation reached 13.5%. Based on funding firm Madison Trust, inflation in 2022 was 8.0%, far above the yearly common of three.7% between 1960 and 2022.
Whereas prices in the U.S. fell for 3 months firstly of the COVID-19 pandemic (March to Could 2020), the four-year improve that adopted was of twenty-two.4%, or a median of about 6.7% yearly.
Total, since April 2021, the CPI had elevated 17.4%. For comparability, between April 2019 and April 2021, costs elevated 4.5% — the identical as between April 2017 and April 2019.
The CPI is the worth index of a basket of products and providers. Based on the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, it consists of “meals, clothes, shelter, and fuels; transportation fares; service charges (e.g., water and sewer service); and gross sales taxes. Costs are collected month-to-month from about 4,000 housing items and roughly 26,000 retail institutions throughout 87 city areas.”
As we have reported earlier than, inflation and the job market had been key factors within the marketing campaign that between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Sources
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — MAY 2024. USDL-24-1091, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7 June 2024, pp. 1–39, https://www.bls.gov/information.launch/pdf/empsit.pdf.
’12-Month Proportion Change, Client Worth Index, Chosen Classes’. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm. Accessed 21 June 2024.
Client Worth Index for All City Customers: All Objects in U.S. Metropolis Common. 12 June 2024, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/collection/CPIAUCSL.
Client Worth Index for All City Customers: All Objects in U.S. Metropolis Common | FRED | St. Louis Fed. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=rocU. Accessed 21 June 2024.
‘Client Worth Index Abstract – 2024 M05 Outcomes’. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/information.launch/cpi.nr0.htm. Accessed 21 June 2024.
Rascouët-Paz, Anna. ‘Greatest US Financial system in 50 Years?’ Snopes, 14 June 2024, https://www.snopes.com//information/2024/06/14/us-economy-best-50-years/.
—. ‘US Financial system Added 15M Jobs Throughout Biden Administration?’ Snopes, 21 Mar. 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/biden-15-million-jobs/.
—. ‘Was Inflation Actually 9% When Biden Grew to become President?’ Snopes, 10 Could 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/biden-inflation-rate-took-office/.
‘Replace: Grocery Worth Inflation Has Cooled Considerably | CEA’. The White Home, 20 June 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2024/06/20/update-grocery-price-inflation-has-cooled-substantially/.
Wiener-Bronner, Danielle. ‘Grocery Costs Are Lastly Falling | CNN Enterprise’. CNN, 15 Could 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/enterprise/grocery-prices-april/index.html.
‘When in U.S. Historical past Had been the Highest and Lowest Inflation Charges?’ Madison Belief, Oct. 2023, https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizations/when-in-us-history-were-the-highest-and-lowest-inflation-rates/.
