US Consumer Prices Surge in January at 7.5% Annual Pace

Washington — 

U.S. consumer prices surged at an annual pace of 7.5% in January, the fastest increase in four decades, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Americans are facing higher costs for autos, household furniture and appliances, according to the government. While some of those purchases can be delayed, U.S. household budgets are being squeezed by something everyone needs — food — with consumers facing higher prices for meat, eggs, citrus fruit and now produce as well. Gasoline prices for motorists also remain high in the U.S.

The inflationary surge is being fueled by coronavirus-related supply-and-demand issues.

Consumers seem willing to buy goods after the coronavirus curbed personal spending, but now manufacturers have been unable in some cases to make enough of their products and at the same time face a shortage of shippers and truckers to get their goods into stores and showrooms.

“The price pressures on households just don’t end,” Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said in a statement. “Not only have home prices jumped 20% in the past year, but now many rents are too, rising 0.5% in the past month alone. Nothing squeezes household budgets more than the outsized increases we’re currently seeing on costs for shelter and housing.”

The U.S. economy is sharply increasing, recovering from the pandemic at a faster pace than economists once projected, advancing by 5.7% in 2021, the fastest full-year gain since 1984.

The U.S., with the world’s biggest economy, added 467,000 more jobs in January, while its unemployment rate ticked up to 4% as more unemployed people looked for work. Businesses added a record 6.4 million jobs last year.

FILE – A hiring sign is shown at a booth for Jameson’s Irish Pub during a job fair on Sept. 22, 2021, in the West Hollywood section of Los Angeles.

The inflation reading for January included a once-a-year revision that affects seasonally adjusted data for the past five years, with the Labor Department also updating the list of goods included in the calculation, to reflect consumer buying habits in recent years.

Economists are predicting that, over time, inflationary pressures will ease. But policymakers at the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, are signaling they will start increasing their benchmark interest next month to tamp down inflation and keep the U.S. economy from overheating. The Fed normally tries to set policies allowing for a 2% annual inflation rate, far less than the current jump in prices.

An increase in the Fed’s key interest rate will likely, over time, boost borrowing costs for consumers and businesses as well, helping to keep inflation in check.

New claims for jobless benefits fell in the United States last week, the Labor Department also reported Thursday, as many employers hung on to the workers they have and searched for more.

The agency said 223,000 unemployed workers filed for compensation, down 16,000 from the revised figure of the week before. The new total was in line with the claim figures from recent weeks as the U.S. economy continues to recover from the havoc inflicted on it by the advance of the coronavirus pandemic that swept into the country nearly two years ago.

Many employers are looking for more workers, despite about 6.5 million workers remaining unemployed in the U.S.

At the end of December, there were 10.9 million job openings in the U.S., but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless shun.

State Department Releases Annual Trafficking in Persons Report

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated human trafficking, the U.S. State Department said in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report released Tuesday.

“This year’s Trafficking in Persons Report sends a strong message to the world that global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and enduring discriminatory policies and practices, have a disproportionate effect on individuals already oppressed by other injustices,” U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the report’s introduction.

“These challenges further compound existing vulnerabilities to exploitation, including human trafficking,” he said.

In the report, Blinken calls for other countries to join the United States to improve “our collective efforts to comprehensively address human trafficking.”

He said doing so requires mitigating “harmful practices and policies that cause socioeconomic or political vulnerabilities that traffickers often prey on.”

The report said the COVID-19 pandemic has brought “unprecedented repercussions for human rights and economic development globally, including in human trafficking.”

“Governments across the world diverted resources toward the pandemic, often at the expense of anti-trafficking efforts, resulting in decreased protection measures and service provision for victims, reduction of preventative efforts, and hindrances to investigations and prosecutions of traffickers,” the report said.

The report explained that those involved in anti-trafficking efforts “found ways to adapt and forged new relationships to overcome the challenges.” It added that traffickers were also adept in altering their methods.

Some specific cases mentioned in the report include examples in India and Nepal in which young poor girls left school to help support their families due to the pandemic’s economic impact. Some, the report said, were forced into marriage for money.

The report cites incidents in the United States, the United Kingdom and Uruguay in which landlords forced female tenants who were economically hurt by the pandemic to have sex with them when the tenant could not pay rent.

In Haiti, Niger and Mali, “gangs” working in camps for displaced people used lax security caused by the pandemic to force residents into sex-for-money acts.

In Myanmar (formerly Burma), which has been roiled by COVID-19 and political unrest, the report said 94% of households saw a decline in income, leaving some members vulnerable to sex trafficking.

“If there is one thing we have learned in the last year, it is that human trafficking does not stop during a pandemic,” Kari Johnstone, senior official and principal deputy director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said in the report’s introduction.

“The concurrence of the increased number of individuals at risk, traffickers’ ability to capitalize on competing crises, and the diversion of resources to pandemic response efforts has resulted in an ideal environment for human trafficking to flourish and evolve,” Johnstone said.