Milk prices, which have ticked down compared with the past year, are still 23% higher than they were pre-pandemic. The consumer price index, the most widely followed measure of inflation, remains about 20% higher than it was before the pandemic. And health insurance prices rose 1.1% last month, though that was largely due to a change in the government’s methodology.īut even as overall price increases slow, it doesn’t mean inflation is reversing or that most prices are falling back to pre-pandemic levels. As new and used vehicles have grown more expensive, so has the cost of insuring them. The average cost of auto insurance, which jumped 1.9% just from September to October, has soared nearly 20% from a year earlier. They include auto and health insurance and some groceries, like beef and bread. Yes, inflation is still painfully apparent in many areas. Automakers, for example, are having a much easier time finding semiconductors.īUT AREN’T THINGS STILL PRETTY EXPENSIVE? An ample availability of products, parts and components help keep a lid on their prices. Those lower prices show up in the government’s data with a lag.Īnd the supply chains that were badly snarled during the pandemic have pretty much unwound. Rents and other housing costs are likely to keep coming down, economists say, as the cost of new leases continues to fall, according to real-time data providers such as Zillow. Rental costs, after a spike in September, rose at a much more gradual pace last month. With more hires available, businesses haven’t had to raise wages as much to fill jobs, thereby easing the pressure on those businesses to raise their prices.Īt the same time, the largest number of new apartment buildings nationwide in decades are being completed, a trend that is helping slow rent increases.

Immigration has increased, too, and with it more people looking for work. Millions of Americans have come off the sidelines in the past year and flooded back into the workforce, seeking and (mostly) finding jobs. WHAT’S DRIVING INFLATON LOWER, AND WILL IT CONTINUE?Ī major factor has been a big improvement in the supply of many things - workers, housing and components for manufactured goods.

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