‘Hidden Tax’: Inflation Runs Rampant After Biden Skirts Blame On Rising Costs

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a metric the federal government uses to measure inflation, surged 8.3% over the last 12 months, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced Wednesday.

The key index ticked up 0.3% on a month-over-month basis between March and April, according to the DOL report published Wednesday morning. The report was largely in line with pre-report forecasts: economists surveyed by the Dow Jones predicted a monthly increase of 0.2% and a 12-month increase of 8.1%, CNBC reported.

“Now what we’re starting to see is that pressure is no longer emanating from the supply side — it’s emanating from the labor-market side. And that’s less likely to go away on its own,” Aneta Markowska, the chief financial economist at investment firm Jefferies, told The Wall Street Journal. “So the Fed will have to work that much harder to get us back to 2% inflation.”

While the report showed inflation remained at staggering heights last month, it represented the first time the year-over-year number has decreased since August 2021, Federal Reserve data showed. Inflation skyrocketed 1.2% in just one month in April and 8.5% between April 2021 and March, the fastest pace of inflation since December 1981, according to the DOL’s previous report.