Inflation Reached Record Highs in June, but Beware of the Fake Report Circulating Online You might have seen some dark news about inflation on Tuesday. It wasn't quite right.
By Gabrielle Bienasz •
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Consumer prices rose 9.1 percent year over year in June, more than analysts had predicted.
"The increase was broad-based, with the indexes for gasoline, shelter, and food being the largest contributors," the Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote in a Wednesday release.
Economists at Refinitiv, a data and analytics firm, had predicted the index's year-over increase would be 8.8 percent, per CNN. This is the biggest jump since the period ending November 1981, the agency added.
However, the increase was not as high as it was in a fake CPI report that circulated online, putting the year-over jump at 10.2 percent. The BLS debunked it in a Tweet, but it still spooked the market, Bloomberg reported.
"Inflation is such a hot topic, people are faking Consumer Price Index reports," Fortune joked in a headline.
The Consumer Price Index is a calculated average based on a "basket" of goods and services from an urban consumer.
In addition, the BLS report said the energy index rose 41.6 percent since June 2021, which was the biggest increase since the period ending April 1980.
In some ways, it's not a surprise: Rent and housing, fuel (which is finally trending down), and food prices have all gone up amid global issues including the invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic — as well as businesses raising prices, as one corporate watchdog has argued, per CBS.
However, there is an indication that as people's pandemic buying habits change, there is excess inventory at major stores like Walmart, Target, and the Gap, according to CNBC.
Inflation is a hassle for businesses and startups. It also typically drives up labor costs, which can take up as much as 70 percent of a company's expenditures, according to Deloitte.
And companies from Twitter to Coinbase announced hiring freezes or rescinded offers amid recession worries (as well as continued drama with Elon Musk's attempted acquisition, in the case of Twitter).
The federal reserve hopes to keep raising interest rates, i.e. how much it costs to borrow money, until inflation decreases, per Axios, but it remains to be seen whether that will be successful.
