It’s been a two-year slog of enduring painfully high prices, but the light at the end of the tunnel just got slightly brighter for consumers. released Wednesday. The CPI climbed by 4.9% for the 12 months ended in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing a slightly slower pace of increase than the 5% in March. It was below economists’ expectations for the number to remain unchanged.
An ‘eye of the beholder’ report Going on two years now, Americans’ budgets have been squeezed by high inflation, which peaked last summer at a 40-year high and has slowly come down amid a protracted Federal Reserve rate-hiking campaign. Since March of last year, the US central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate 10 times in an effort to cool inflation by stifling demand.