South Florida’s inflation rate jumped to its highest level in two years last month. Consumer prices were up 3.8% percent compared to a year earlier.
The rise was fueled by a significant increase in gasoline prices. Average pump prices across the region are up about $1.50 a gallon compared to last year. The gasoline component of the monthly Consumer Price Index was up 34% over the past year. Prices shot higher at the end of February as the U.S. and Israel launched attacks in Iran, which since closed the Strait of Hormuz to ocean-going crude oil tankers.
But even without higher energy prices, regional inflation was up almost 3% in April in a sign of how stubborn overall inflation remains. The regional interim president of the Federal Reserve discouraged her central bank colleagues from supporting lower interest rates.
“With inflation still well above our target, and renewed price pressures brewing from a historic disruption in global oil supplies, the time is not right to loosen policy and risk stoking further inflation,” wrote Cheryl Venable in her first essay as interim president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. She is an alternate member of the Fed's interest rate-setting committee, which next meets in mid-June.
In addition to gas prices, the cost of housing and medical care contributed to higher inflation last month in the Miami metropolitan statistical area, which includes Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Only two spending categories saw prices actually drop in the past year; clothing and used cars and trucks, according to the data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
South Florida’s inflation data is released every two months.
