(The Center Square) – Among 22 metro areas measured nationwide, Detroit has the second-highest rise in inflation, WalletHub reported.
WalletHub compared the Consumer Price Index for the latest month of available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to two months prior and one year prior for a snapshot of how inflation has changed in the cities.
The Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro had the highest score, 84.62, with a 2% increase in CPI compared with two months prior and 6.90% compared with a year prior, Detroit was close behind, the report indicated.
The Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area had a total score of 83.30, with a 1.90% rise in the latest month versus two months prior and a 7% increase compared with a year prior.
Houston-The Woodland-Sugar Land in Texas has the same CPI change for the latest month compared with two months prior. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale in Arizona (8.5%), Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue in Washington (8%), Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater in Florida (7.7%), and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell in Georgia (7.2%) have had higher rises in CPI in the latest month compared with a year earlier.
The Chicago metro area ranked 14th in the report, and the Minneapolis area ranked 21st.
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim in California had the lowest score in the report. It’s the sole metro area that has had a drop (-0.2%) in CPI in the latest month compared with two months prior. Its prior year rise was 3.7%.
University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy political scientist and statistics lecturer Jonathan Hanson said in the report that over the past three months, inflation has basically been close to 0, as the CPI’s only .45% higher.
“Annualized, that is a rate of less than 2%, which is what the Fed has been targeting,” he said.
The CPI fell .1 points in December, he said. The BLS reported in January that the CPI for All Urban Consumers declined 0.1% in December 2022, seasonally adjusted, after rising 0.1% in November 2022.
“I think the consensus is growing that inflation is largely a transitory phenomenon connected with disruptions in global supply chains,” he said. “We seem to be coming out of that, though we need more time to pass to be sure.”
He said people have trouble distinguishing the level of the price index and the rate of change in the price index.
“Inflation is typically measured as the change in prices year over year,” he said. “The December inflation rate of 6.5% means that, compared with December 2021, the consumer price index is 6.5% higher. But pretty much all of that increase took place from December to June.”
Prices aren’t currently rapidly increasing, he said. Rather, price increases already occurred, and the overall price index has mostly held steady for three months. The goal of interest rate increases is to slow down the economy, cooling demand.
“Pressure on prices thus falls,” he said. “It’s effective for controlling the rate of inflation but does not come without some pain.”
