The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area ranks second in the nation with the biggest inflation problem, according to a new report by Wallethub.
The year-over-year national inflation rate rose 3.5% for March 2024, while the annual rate of inflation in the South Florida metropolitan area got to 4.90%.
Personal-finance website WalletHub decided to take a look at exactly how inflation has been impacting people across the U.S. -- and South Florida residents are among those being impacted the most.
A total of 23 major MSAs -- Metropolitan Statistical Areas -- were compared across two key metrics involving the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation.
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Researchers noted Consumer Price Index for the latest month for which BLS data is available to two months prior and one year prior -- to get a snapshot of how inflation has changed in the short and long term, WalletHub stated.
WalletHub developed a score that measures both the inflation rate for the last year and the inflation for the last three months.
Miami was tied with Dallas-Fort Worth with the highest Consumer Price Index change when it came to March versus one year prior -- at 4.90%.
See below the top 10 cities with the worst inflation problems:
Some experts suggest that raising interest rates again will be the most effective solution in the long-term, but will hurt low-income families.
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“There are other tools to control inflation, but they only work in the short term. Price controls, for example, are hard to enforce and can lead to market distortions because prices are not based on actual supply and demand,” said Iasmin Goes, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science at Colorado State University.
“Tax increases or wage controls are deeply unpopular. So, raising interest rates is the most effective solution to control inflation. This is not to say that it is the perfect solution; in particular, higher interest rates are really bad for low-income families that already have high credit card debt and no savings. But in the aggregate, it is a strategy that tends to work," she added.
