According to a Gallup study quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week (May 10), American consumers no longer place the same significance on inflation as they did a year prior, having decreased by 15 points.
Additionally, consumers are becoming accustomed to high prices rising even further, leaving manufacturers and retailers with no motivation to restrain these rises, regardless of the possible causes of the markups. Although it is far from returning to pre-pandemic rates, the speed of inflation has slowed down from last year’s spectacular spike, which may account for its waning significance as a contentious issue.
We’ve already written about this normalization and even discovered that people believe inflation would endure until October 2024. The high cost of necessities is what drives 38% of consumers to live paycheck to paycheck, as was most recently shown in the April partnership with LendingClub, “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report.”
