Axios posted an interesting chart yesterday. The chart took at look at the rate of inflation for groceries, which was high and is now low, and compared it to the cumulative inflation of groceries since Biden took office in 2021.

The inflation rate for groceries is really low these days, with prices rising just 1.1% over the last year.

But since January 2021, prices are up nearly 21%.

https://t.co/HRmo05zs0R

— Axios (@axios) May 28, 2024

The point here is that while grocery inflation is pretty low compared to last year, prices are still up significantly compared to what they were a few years ago. Axios argues this is the metric that is more relevant as people think about whether they want to reelect Joe Biden.

Also, this same thing applies to the cost of going out to a restaurant.

Dining out is worse — prices rose 4.1% over the last year, far faster than costs at the grocery store or overall inflation.

And prices for "food away from home" are up nearly 22% since 2021.

So on the one hand it's true that inflation is low at the supermarket. On the other hand people are still keenly aware that prices are high compared to a few years ago.

Also today, the NY Times points out that the cost of home insurance is up substantially but this is barely reflected in measures of inflation.

Last year, premium rates for owner-occupied housing were up 11.3 percent on average nationally, based on data from S&P Global Market Intelligence...

Those higher insurance rates are bringing pain to many homeowners, forcing people out of their homes and communities while leaving others taking big risks as they drop insurance altogether. But the rising costs are not meaningfully boosting the nation’s official inflation data, which could help to explain a small part of the disconnect between how people feel about the economy and how it looks on paper...

The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, does measure property insurance but gives it only a tiny weight in the basket of goods and services that people consume. That’s because when calculating the weight, the government takes how much homeowners spend on insurance and subtracts out how much insurance companies are expected to spend on claims. The upshot: What feels like a big expense to most people adds up to a tiny one for inflation accounting purposes.

I've definitely seen this here in California. With insurers leaving the state or limiting the number of new policies they will take on, prices have gone up sharply. As with the grocery data, the rise is pretty dramatic if you look back over the past several years.

Home insurance is up 48.40% in California from 2019 to 2024, the 8th biggest increase overall in the U.S.

The average cost of home insurance in California is still fairly low at $1,121 but it's up nearly 9% this year. The cost of car insurance is also up sharply.

I guess the point of all of this is that even as inflation has come down (we get the next report on Friday) prices are still a lot higher than they were just a few years ago. I suspect that's what many poll respondents mean when they say inflation is one of their top problems. It really is good that we're not adding to prices as quickly as we were in 2022 but a lot of people are still feeling the cumulative impact.