CommentaryInsightsPerspectivesExplainers
Topic
Inflation & Prices
9 pieces
Pieces
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Since 2022 the home-price index has risen 10.1 per cent while the median new house has sold for less each year
The index stands at 328.5 for 2025 against 298.3 for 2022, and the median price of a new house sold runs 433, 427, 419 and 415 thousand dollars over the same four readings. The two series cover different housing and report different statistics, so neither one corrects the other.
- InsightsEnergy & Power
Crude has fallen back below its 2021 price and the all-commodities index has not
West Texas Intermediate averaged 95 dollars a barrel in 2022 and 65 in 2025, three dollars below its 2021 reading and thirty below the peak. The producer price index for all commodities peaked in the same year, sits 1.6 per cent below that peak, and rose 2.2 per cent in the year crude fell 15.6 per cent.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
The order book everyone quotes is measured in dollars that changed size
New orders for durable goods reached 311.2 billion dollars in 2025, the highest reading in five years. It is a current-dollar figure stated as a monthly rate, and it is routinely read as neither of those things.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Average hourly earnings rose in every year of the window, and the price level rose by slightly more
Private-sector pay went from 29.36 dollars an hour in 2020 to 36.44 in 2025, a gain of 7.08 dollars with no down year. Restated at 2020 prices using the consumer price index, the 2025 figure is 29.30 dollars, about six cents below where the series started.
- CommentaryIndustrial Policy
The bigger GDP number answers a different question
The United States publishes two gross domestic product totals and they are diverging by design. Industrial programmes are almost always defended with the larger one, which is the only one that cannot tell you whether more is being made.
- InsightsEconomic Security
The consumer price index has not fallen in a single year since 2020
Prices rose more slowly after 2022, and the index kept rising anyway. It stands at 322 against 258.9 five years earlier, a level about 24 percent higher.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
The low point of this vehicle sales window is 2022, not 2020
The annual rate ran 14.9 million units in 2020, rose to 15.4 in 2021, then fell to 14.2 in 2022, the lowest of the six readings. Three quarters of the recovery since arrived in a single step, and the two years after it added 0.3 million units each.
- InsightsMacroeconomics & Markets
Producer prices fell in two straight years and are still below the 2022 peak
The all-commodities producer price index reached 264.5 in 2022, fell twice, and at 260.3 in 2025 has not regained it. It also sits 65.9 points above 2020.
- InsightsEconomic Security
Retail sales rose in every year of the window, counted in dollars
The monthly rate went from 601.2 billion dollars in 2021 to 724.4 in 2025 with no down year. The largest single-year rise landed in the same year as the largest rise in the price level.