Inflation has hit consumers across the US hard. Prices on grocery and energy bills jumped, housing prices surged, and the Fed’s responding interest rate hikes have pushed mortgage and credit card interest rates to record highs.
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Even as inflation continues a steady decline from its mid-2022 peak of 9.1%, Americans in some cities still feel its claws more than in others. Inflation currently sits at 3.4%, still above the Fed’s 2% target rate. This means consumers still have less purchasing power, even as wages race to meet rising prices. For example, in mid-2023, an average American household needed about $709 more than they did in 2021 to purchase the same goods.
Consumers living in Dallas, Texas; Miami, Florida; and Honolulu, Hawai’i are taking the biggest hit from inflation, according to a WalletHub analysis of the most recent inflation data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The personal finance company compared consumer prices in major metropolitan areas from December with those from October and the year before (December 2022) in order to score each city’s level of economic suffering from 0 to 100 (100 = highest suffering).
🌵Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas: Prices rose 5.2% in December from a year-ago. They also were 0.9% higher than in October. Despite the state’s comparatively low cost of living, Texans have felt the strain of inflation more than the rest of the US. In November, the Dallas Fed reported that 52% of the state’s residents were “highly stressed about inflation” compared to 47% of Americans overall.
🌞 Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Prices dipped in December from two months prior, when the metropolitan area was ranked as having the highest inflation rate in the country. But they remained a whopping 5.7% higher than in December 2022, even as the area experiences some of the lowest unemployment. Housing prices are the main culprit behind the cities’ high inflation rate. Luckily, a set of minimum wage increases for Florida workers began in September 2023, raising base pay by $1, up to $12 per hour. The minimum wage is set to hike to $16 per hour by the end of 2026, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
🌴 Honolulu, Hawai’i: Prices jumped 0.8% in December from two months before and 3.6% over the same month in 2022. Changes to the state’s minimum wage law went into effect in January, raising base pay by $2, up to $14 per hour, a bump that will impact 22% of the state’s workforce. The law will result in two more incremental increases in the minimum wage, to $16 in 2026 and $18 in 2028, according to the EPI.
Meanwhile, Anchorage, Alaska was the all-out winner of the inflation game, with a score of 0. Inflation in December was just 1.8%, with prices down 1.1% from October.
