August's Price Inflation Soared, and That Means Earnings Fell Yet Again
Mises Institute
Sep 13, 2022

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The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released new price inflation data today, and the news wasn’t good. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 8.3 percent year over year during August, before seasonal adjustment. That’s the seventeenth month in a row of inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target, and it’s six months in a row of price inflation above 8 percent.

Month-over-month inflation rose as well, with the seasonally adjusted CPI rising 0.1 percent from July to August. With the exception of July’s month-over-month figure, which was zero, monthly CPI inflation has risen twenty-seven months in a row.

August’s increase keeps price inflation near forty-year highs. June’s year-over-year increase of 9.1 percent was the largest CPI increase since 1981, but August’s rise of 8.3 percent still keeps price inflation well within the same range as the inflationary years of the early 1980s. August’s increase was the fifth-largest increase in forty years.