On Thursday, President Joe Biden traveled to Ohio to make the case that the economy is headed in the right direction. “We’ve turned the tide,” he told the crowd in Cleveland.
Shortly afterward, during an appearance on Yahoo Finance Live, one of his top economic advisers acknowledged that in areas like inflation and in the labor market, “there's going to be some bumps in the road” as the economy continues to right itself following the pandemic.
However, National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti also told Yahoo Finance that the recent inflation jump is actually a positive sign. “The faster than expected increase in some of those prices is actually a good sign in the sense that it's a sign that the economy is recovering faster than a lot of people expected,” he said.
‘Back to the levels we were at before’
In April, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped at an annualized rate of 4.2%, the biggest leap in more than 12 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported. The three categories that saw the biggest spikes in prices included used cars and trucks; airline fees; and car rentals and lodging away from home. On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that another measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, also surged in April well beyond the Federal Reserve's 2% target rate for inflation.
