Unless you're buying booze in Miami or clothes in Baltimore, the price of everything has gone up since the pandemic, often by startling amounts. But the impact of inflation has been very uneven, with some areas seeing consumer prices rise well above the 22% average rise between January 2020 and August 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. The highest overall rise of the 23 metro areas Pew looked at was in the Tampa Bay area, driven largely by housing costs, while the smallest was in the San Francisco area, where prices, especially for housing, started out a lot higher than in most of the US. The top 5:
- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, 29.8%
- Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, 28%
- Atlanta-Sandy Spring-Roswell, 26.9%
- Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, 26.6%
- Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, 25.9%
The bottom 5, starting with the lowest:
- San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, 16.6%
- Boston-Cambridge-Newton, 17.8%
- Urban Alaska, 18%
- Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, 18.8%
- New York-Newark-Jersey City, 19.3%
Pew looked at the prices of 20 items in the US Bureau of Labor Statistics'
Consumer Price Index. The highest rises were in natural gas and electricity in the San Francisco area, up 70.7% and 66.2%, respectively. The price of baked goods almost doubled in the San Diego area. The only price decline besides apparel in the Baltimore area and alcoholic beverages in the Miami area was in the Boston area, where recreation costs fell almost 5%. Pew notes that the inflation rate fell to 2.5% in August from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022—but unless there is a recession, most prices are likely to stay high. (The rate
fell again in September, to 2.4%.)