The annual inflation rate last month reached its highest level in nearly 40 years, according to Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
In November, prices were 6.8 percent higher than they were the year prior, according to the report. That price jump marks the highest 12-month rate of inflation since 1982.
Much of the inflation is concentrated in the energy sector, where the price of gasoline is up nearly 60 percent, the highest annual increase in 41 years. Food prices have also risen significantly, particularly beef, which is 20 percent more expensive than it was a year ago.
The dismal inflation numbers come at a time when the Biden administration lacks public confidence in its handling of the economy. An October poll found that 62 percent of registered voters attribute the high inflation rates of recent months to President Joe Biden’s policies.
Republicans pointed to Friday’s report as evidence of economic mismanagement on the part of Biden and the Democratic Party.
“Joe Biden truly is the inflation president,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said Friday. “The Biden inflation is a tax on those who can least afford it.”
“Prices keep rising and all Democrats want to do is spend trillions more in taxpayer money,” a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said. “Democrats created the inflation crisis crushing American families and are too incompetent to fix it.”
The administration lately has focused on repairing its poor public image on the economy. Biden last month tapped the country’s emergency oil reserves to dampen the country’s skyrocketing energy prices. Just a week later, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee congratulated Biden for achieving November’s two-cent drop in gas prices.
CNN reported this week that White House officials have been meeting secretly with journalists to “reshape” the media’s coverage of their performance on the economy.
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