Nine months ago, Democrat President Joe Biden said he thought that inflation had reached its peak. Since then, inflation continued to rise to its highest level in 40 years.
“I think it’s the peak of the crisis,” Biden told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on December 10, 2021. “It’s a real bump in the road. It does affect families when you walk into a grocery store and you’re paying more for whatever you’re purchasing – it matters.”
“It matters to people when you’re paying more for gas, although in some states we’ve got the price down below three bucks a gallon, but the point is it’s not gone down quickly enough. But I think it will,” Biden added.
At the time of Biden’s comments, the annual rate of inflation was 6.8% and the price of gasoline was about $3.30 per gallon. Afterwards, the annual rate of inflation climbed to 9.1% by June 2022, the highest rate in more than 40 years. Meanwhile, the price of gasoline also increased to more than $5 per gallon.
Prices have since continued to increase although a slower rate with the annual rate of inflation being 8.3% in August 2022, according to a newly released report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Record high inflation has resulted in the real wages of Americans decreasing significantly over the last year, according to a separate report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Real average hourly earnings decreased 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, from August 2021 to August 2022,” the report said. “The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.6 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 3.4-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.”
