Inflation surges as consumer prices leap 5.4 percent, biggest jump since 2008

Inflation continued to surge in June, with consumer prices accelerating at the fastest pace in almost 13 years as the economy emerges from the pandemic, the feds said Tuesday.

The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, which measures a basket of goods and services as well as energy and food costs, jumped 5.4 percent in June from a year earlier. That’s higher than May’s 5 percent year-over-year rise in prices, and the biggest 12-month rise since August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the US into the worst recession it had seen since the Great Depression.