Rise in Consumer Prices Throughout Riverside Area Matches National Trend

RIVERSIDE (CNS) – Prices for goods and services climbed 1.4% throughout the Riverside metropolitan area in the last two months, dovetailing with price surges nationwide and raising pocketbook pressure locally by an estimated 9.4% over the last year, federal officials said today. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ bimonthly Consumer Price Index for the Riverside Area showed that, like the rest of the country, energy prices — mainly gasoline — were the main driver behind rising inflation, with a whopping 35.2% jump in April and May throughout the metro area, which covers northwestern Riverside County, as well as the cities of Ontario and San Bernardino. "Prices for food at home jumped 10.5% since a year ago," the BLS stated, adding that "meats, poultry, fish and eggs" led the upward dollar- cost trajectory. Strip food and energy out of the equation — so-called "core inflation" — and the regional CPI was up 1.1% over the last two months, figures showed. In the 12-month period ending May 2021, the local CPI registered a 5.9% year-over-year increase. The 9.4% rate rise spanning May 2021 to May 2022 reflects the galloping pace of inflation impacting most sectors of the economy, with no comparable increases for the Riverside metro area since the local CPI was first published in 2018, data showed. The BLS said that, nationally, the Urban Consumer CPI went up 1% from April to May, but for the 12-month period ending May 2022, it was up 8.6%, representing the "largest 12-month increase since the period ending December 1981." The accelerating consumer price hikes have been blamed by the Biden administration on the war in Ukraine and consequent energy supply disruptions, but critics have pointed to the administration’s restrictive domestic energy policies, as well as excessive spending, including the flood of dollars contained in spending packages, as root causes. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged earlier this week in congressional testimony that inflation is the "top economic problem" facing the nation and that it would not be "transitory," as she and Federal Reserve Bank Chair Jerome Powell had predicted last year. Copyright 2022, City News Service, Inc. CNS-06-10-2022 10:55