Even as inflation continues to cool into the second half of 2024, many Americans say they’re still struggling to make ends meet.
Roughly one-third of U.S. workers say they’re living paycheck to paycheck and have nearly no money for savings after paying their monthly bills, according to a survey from personal finance website Bankrate.
The rate of inflation is slower but prices are never going back down.
On top of that companies used inflation as an excuse to raise prices higher than they should have.
Yeah you know why people are still living paycheck to paycheck? Because it doesn’t matter if inflation slows down; it never goes backwards.
It stopped raining but grass is still wet
It’s still raining, but it’s not raining as hard as it was a while ago. Grass is still wet.
FTFY
Inflation is cooling because Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
Inflation was never going to come down until people ran out of money. Basic economics unfortunately. When people are tight on money and cut down on spending, demand drops. And with demand dropping inflation goes down.
Inflation can cool down all it wants, it’s reported year on year so prices are still much higher than 5 years ago while wages haven’t increased, deflation or huge wage increases would be necessary to make it so people would have their purchasing power back.
Wages are outpacing inflation, there’s just a lot of catching up to do.
https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/
% change is a pretty wild metric. It becomes unwieldy at longer time spans, and does a pretty poor job at comparisons.
Can we get like wages vs cost of living, or rent/mortgage as a percentage of income?
