Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on Sept. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Inflation hit a three-year low last month, just as the presidential election is heating up.
But the high cost of housing and other necessities will keep the economy central to both of the major campaigns, as seen this week in the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
The Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, rose 2.5% in the past year, which is the smallest jump since February 2021, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday.
The main driver of this increase was shelter, which moved up 0.5% in August. Airline fares, car insurance, education, and apparel also rose that month.
But wages also rose 0.4% in August and 3.8% over the past year, and the average workweek increased by 0.1 hour — welcome news for workers trying to keep up with the cost of living.
Voters continue to say the economy is key in deciding who should be president, at 81%, and 4 in 10 say the economy and inflation are the most important issues guiding that decision.
Trump, the former president and Republican nominee, blamed the Biden administration for high prices early on Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia, falsely claiming the post-pandemic wave of inflation is the worst ever. It’s the worst in four decades, but not the worst ever.
In January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, the 12-month inflation rate was 1.4% for all items tracked by the Consumer Price Index. Amid the pandemic, in May 2020, the rate fell to 0.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That was the lowest since September 2015, when the year-to-year inflation rate was zero.
“We’ve had a terrible economy because inflation, which is really known as a country buster, it breaks up countries, we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Trump said.
The worst inflation rate in U.S. history was actually in 1980, at 14%. The current wave – the highest inflation spike since then – peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. Inflation for groceries specifically — expenses that are high in voters’ minds — peaked a month later, hitting 13.5% in August 2022.
Democratic nominee and Vice President Harris responded to Tuesday’s question about the economy by touting tax cut proposals to combat housing costs.
“The cost of housing is far too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children, and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time so that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy a car seat, buy clothes for their children,” she said.
Harris also pitched a proposal for a $50,000 tax deduction for small startup businesses.
Taylor St. Germain, an economist at ITR Economics, a nonpartisan economic research and consulting firm based in New Hampshire, said the latest data shows inflation is slowing enough to suggest it’s time for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates.
“It’s encouraging to see that inflation is slowing and slowing to these much lower levels,” said St. Germain said. “However, it is, of course, still elevated and one of the reasons it’s still elevated is that shelter costs are driving a significant portion of that inflation, with rents rising as well, especially as we looked at this latest CPI report.”
The Fed began raising interest rates in March 2022 to bring down inflation, raising interest rates 11 times, and made its last rate hike in July of last year.
Economists are watching closely to see if the Fed cuts rates during its meeting next week, which is expected to have an impact on the housing market and other costs.
Kitty Richards, acting executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank based in Washington, DC, said the Fed’s decisions are contributing to housing costs.
“The problem with housing is fundamentally a supply problem. And the Fed’s actions are actually making that supply problem worse by locking up the housing market and making it more expensive to buy, build or rehab housing,” she said. “Housing is such a big part of people’s experience of the economy and it really matters to folks when they might want to move and look around and they can’t. They can’t even afford to buy a house that is the same price as the house they live in because the interest rates are so high.”