Rising Costs of Everyday Living

 Are the salaries that you’ve seen offered to newly hired workers adjusted for the increasing cost of living ?   Over the last 12 months, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 2.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.

Certainly a large culprit for the increase in daily expenses is the 11.0-percent increase in the energy index.

The 2.3-percent rise in the food index is the largest since May 2009.  Over the past 12 months, the index for food at home has risen 2.8 percent while the food away from home index has risen 1.6 percent.  Why were these costs of dining so differently impacted?  Is it that restaurants need to lower their prices to try to stay in business?  Or is it that wholesale prices have not changed as drastically as the cost to buy groceries on a personal scale?

The 12-month increase in the index for all items less food and energy reached 1.1 percent in February after being as low as 0.6 percent in October 2010. The indexes for airline fares, medical care, new vehicles, and used cars and trucks were among the indexes that increased over that span; indexes that declined include household furnishings and operations, apparel, and recreation.