Month after month, inflation figures have reached multi-decade highs as the economy under President Joe Biden and an congressional Democrat majority continues to make life more expensive for American consumers.
Gas and diesel prices have skyrocketed since Biden took office, as have food, housing, and automobile prices — so much so that retired Americans are now “un-retiring” so they can make ends meet.
The Daily Wire reports:
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the number of retired seniors surged from 28.3 million in February 2020 to 31.6 million in October 2021, however, higher price levels and other economic challenges are now forcing Americans into “unretirement.”
Indeed reported that as of March 2022, roughly 3.2% of workers who were retired a year earlier are now employed.
Indeed said that a decrease and subsequent rebound in unretirement has precedent. During the Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009 — the last major recession to impact the United States — workers were enticed out of retirement as the labor market became more lucrative.
However, consumer price inflation rates following the financial crisis largely stayed within range of the Federal Reserve’s long-term 2 percent target, though they spiked briefly to nearly 4 percent in 2011 before returning to stability.
The aftermath of the pandemic and its lockdown-induced economic disruptions, however, have been marked by a once-in-a-generation spike in inflation; by March, consumer price levels were increasing 8.5 percent annually.
Other economists have pointed to massive government spending — flooding the economy with trillions upon trillions of dollars during the last year of the Trump administration and carrying through the first 18 months of the Biden administration — which they say has led to higher prices as fewer goods are available.
“It is hard to rule out the influence of waning concerns about the pandemic and faster inflation, and they are surely factors,” Indeed acknowledged. “But it’s not clear that they are the main reasons.”
The Daily Wire added:
From October 2021 to March 2022 alone, more than 850,000 Americans returned to the job market, according to the Federal Reserve. Over the same period, inflation increased by another 2.3%, after already having risen from 1.4% in January 2021.
The rise in prices has outpaced nominal increases in pay, producing a nearly 3% decline in real wages — stretching Americans’ budgets with respect to food, gas, housing, and other necessities. A recent poll found that 94% of Americans were either “upset” or “concerned” about the impact of skyrocketing inflation, while a slim 28% approved of President Joe Biden’s approach toward managing price levels.
“Inflation, as we all know, when it gets in the system, it’s very hard to get it out,” billionaire investor David Rubenstein said during a Fox News this week. “It takes a long time to get it out, can take a couple of years.”
“So now I don’t think the inflation rate this year will be what it was last month or so. I don’t think we’re going to have 8 percent annualized rate of inflation, but I suspect something around 5 percent is probably not unlikely, maybe even 6 percent,” he added.
Milken Institute Chief Economist Bill Lee agreed, saying inflation would be “well over 3.5 percent” for the next five years.
“One of the things that we’ve seen is that inflation has, you know, very direct impacts on Americans, on American families and American businesses,” Director of the Congressional Budget Office Phillip Swagel told Fox News Digital.
“It also has implications… for the budget. For American families, the high inflation that we’ve seen the highest in decades has meant higher prices for food, for travel, for gasoline. It means that family incomes don’t go as far. Family budgets are stretched,” he added.
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