If you’re rooting for a chill in the swiftly growing local cost of living, 2024 offers little hope, so far.
Southern California inflation was rising at a 4% annual pace in March – a decided upswing from price gains of 3.1% in January, says my trusty spreadsheet’s average of Consumer Price Indexes for Los Angeles-Orange County (monthly data) and the Inland Empire and San Diego (bi-monthly reports for March).
Topline
Ponder that this yardstick of local inflation rose 4.4% for all of 2023 – so we’ve made little progress this year. Also note, this isn’t 2022 when inflation soared by 7.9%. Things are better than that worst-in-four-decades scenario.
Plus, this is no Southern California quirk. Nationally, inflation ran at a 3.5% annual rate in March vs. gains of 3.1% in January, 4.1% for all of last year, and 8% in 2022.
Now looking across Southern California, 2024’s big inflationary headache is about “services” – what you pay the people who do stuff for you. And fatter paychecks are one reason why costs are rising.
For example, look at the CPI’s “services less rent” category for the region. These prices are up 5.4% in the year ended in March – a huge reversal from the gain of only 0.3% in January. This cost niche rose 5.2% last year and 7.5% in 2022.
The good news in the CPI report is that prices for the goods that we purchase appear relatively tame overall.
Prices of what we frequently use – “nondurable” items such as fuel and food – were up 2.1% in March vs. 2.6% in January and 1.6% last year. That’s far less than the 12% jump of 2022.
And prices for big-ticket durable items – think autos, furniture and appliances – continue to decline. They’re down 2.8% in the year ended in March after dropping at a 1.9% annual rate in January and falling 1.7% last year. But don’t forget, these costs jumped 7.2% in 2022.
Tidbits
Let’s look at how Southern California prices are moving in certain key slices of the CPI, ranked by…
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