How U.S. Consumer Prices Have Evolved Since February 2020

Consumer prices in the United States have risen sharply over the past three years after generous Covid stimulus spending combined with Covid-related supply chain disruptions and Russia’s inflation of Ukraine form a perfect storm of inflationary pressures. As of October 2023, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was up 18.7 percent compared to February 2020, the last month before the Covid-19 pandemic. Assuming the Fed’s targeted 2-percent inflation rate, prices would only have increased by 7.5 percent during that period, illustrating how severe the recent inflation surge has been.

Not all prices are created equal, however, and while some expenditure categories have seen prices rise even more steeply than 18.7 percent since February 2020, others have barely budged. As our chart shows, the Consumer Price Index for Transportation, which includes new and used vehicles, airline fares, gasoline and others transportation-related goods and services, has risen most quickly since February 2020, The CPI-U for Education and Communication, including for example tuition, postage and telephone services, increased by just 4.1 percent over the same period.

Other expenditure categories with above-average price increases since the start of the pandemic are food and beverages as well as housing, which are up 23.4 and 19.8 percent since February 2020, respectively, while prices in recreation, apparel and medical care have seen more modest increases over the past 45 months.

Please note that we followed the Bureau of Labor Statistics' definition of eight major expenditure groups for this analysis, meaning that energy prices aren't a category of their own, but are instead included in other categories according to their purpose. For example, gasoline prices are included in the transportation category while household energy is included in housing. When looked at separately, energy prices have seen the biggest increase of all, rising 33.4 percent since February 2020.