Worldwide inflation is growing, according to research from 44 different nations.

When the U.S. economy was in a pandemic-induced recession two years ago, with millions of people out of work and central bankers and politicians working to revive it, inflation appeared to be an afterthought. Many of the same politicians continued to claim that price increases were "transitory" and were caused by clogged supply chains, labor shortages, and other problems that would resolve themselves sooner rather than later, a year later, with unemployment declining and the inflation rate increasing.

Now that inflation is at its highest level since the early 1980s, Biden administration officials admit they were too late. The consumer price index used to quantify yearly inflation, reached a record of 8.6 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent data. This was the highest level since 1981. Although not nearly to the same degree as the CPI, other inflation indicators have also seen considerable spikes over the last year or two.

 

For whole generations of Americans, fast price increases may have felt like a thing of the distant past due to the relatively low level of inflation in the US for such a long time. Year-over-year inflation averaged just over 5.0 percent four times between the beginning of 1991 and the end of 2019, averaging around 2.3 percent per month. Since President Joe Biden has said that combating the issue is his top domestic priority, Americans now rank inflation as the country's greatest concern.

 

Inflationary whiplash is not, however, limited to the United States. Consumer prices have increased significantly since the pre-pandemic period in virtually all of the advanced nations studied by the Pew Research Center, according to data from 44 advanced economies.