A report by the personal finance company WalletHub, ranked 23 of the biggest metropolitan areas in America to determine how much the inflation rate differs across the country — Dallas-Fort Worth came up on the top.
According to the report, DFW ranked #1 among all metropolitan areas, not only due to having one of the highest Consumer Price Index change year-over-year at 5.20%, shared only by San Diego-Carlsbad, California, but also for having the highest increase of the same index when compared to the previous two months at 0.90%.
The Pew Research Center reported that during the first two years that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. saw the highest inflation rate since the early ‘80s with a consumer price index (CPI) increase of 8.6%. Since then, the inflation rate started decreasing and is coming closer to its pre-pandemic numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in December 2023, CPI increased an average of 3.4% across the U.S.
“The pandemic led to government stimulus policies, such as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits which further increased consumer demand,” said Professor of Political Science and Chair of the School of International Studies at the University of the Pacific, Daniel C. O’Neil. “After the pandemic, firms found they had to pay higher wages to get people back to work… While rising wages are a good thing, if they do not keep up with increases in the price of rent, food, gas, and other necessities, they are not real increases and wages.”
However, the inflation rate is not uniform across America. According to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, cross-regional differences in inflation rates result from different price changes by category (food and beverages, housing, transportation, medical care, entertainment, education, etc.) The report also highlighted the housing sector’s role in regional inflation differences.
“After digging more deeply into the housing sector, we find that this is really a story about shelter pricing rather than the other subcategories of housing—i.e., household fuel and furnishing,” explain Elainia Gupta and Leslie McGranahan, authors of the report. “Shelter expenditure made up about 75% of the housing category.”
For its report, WalletHub used two key metrics involving the CPI: CPI Change comparing the latest month vs. two months before and CPI change comparing the latest month vs one year ago. For the first metric DFW came up first and second for the latter, topped only by Miami, Florida.