📈💰 Wondering why the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.9% year-over-year in May? It turns out that the acceleration was largely driven by higher prices for services, which saw a 4.6% increase. Here are some other highlights from the May 2024 CPI release:
📱 Prices for cellular services fell at a slower pace in May (-19.4%) compared to April (-26.6%)
✈️ Prices for travel tours (+6.9%) and air transportation (+4.5%) rose faster year over year in May
🥦 Food purchased from stores saw a slight acceleration in price, rising 1.5% year over year
Curious about how these shifts in prices and spending are impacting Canadians? Join our CPI data experts tomorrow, June 26 at 1:30 p.m. (Eastern time) in the r/PersonalFinanceCanada subreddit for an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) event! Get your questions ready and let’s dive into the world of consumer prices together! 🤑💡
What do you think is behind the rise in prices for services and other goods? Share your thoughts and insights below! Let’s learn from each other and make sense of the latest CPI data trends. #ConsumerPriceIndex #CPI #Inflation #EconomicTrends
Emoji game is on point!
So no BoC rate cut in July?
Why not also include mortgage interest and rent costs which continue to be the single largest contributors to headline inflation at ~23% and 9% YoY? 🏡🏢
Given this is done using the updated CPI basket, does anyone know if it says what CPI would’ve been using last years basket formula?
Have you considered adjusting the “basket of goods” to be realistic as to what a normal Canadian would buy? The fact that hotels and plane tickets are weighted so high but house prices are not even included is a complete joke. And yes, I understand they have some bullshit “justification” for looking at payments instead of the price of houses, but it’s all manipulation. House prices are the only thing they don’t look at directly.
Cell phone service prices have really fallen off a cliff in the past decade due to competition (Freedom Mobile is the obvious cheap competitor in large cities in Canada). A drastic change in technology in 2018 (that was when Apple decided to allow iPhones to have 2 SIM cards) caused people to have a lot more choice. They can even combine a cheap data plan from Hong Kong (3 HK) and a cheap voice plan from Freedom prepaid. It also appears that internet service pricing has decreased over the years. I remembered paying $80 + HST for home internet 10 years ago and now only paying $60 + HST.
Air transportation costs are a luck of the draw. I have found that if you want to travel in the summer (July, August), you should book your tickets in early January. Also, be warned, for anyone wishing to travel to mainland China, you either need to be willing to pay ridiculous fares (yes, $5000 per person for an economy class round trip flight is ridiculous, but the reason is that the planes only fly once a week, not once a day like they used to before COVID and before the Russian invasion of Ukraine). Going to Hong Kong is far cheaper than going anywhere in the mainland, even when factoring in the additional costs associated with traveling from Hong Kong to the mainland by land or by sea (yes, there are ferries you can ride from Hong Kong into the mainland).
As for food that is purchased at the store, they have gotten more expensive. My mother, who works for a grocery store, told me that people are not buying as much meat as they used to. They are also buying cheaper cuts of meat. She works inside a No Frills (but is not employed by No Frills), and they are offering a lot more points for spending equating to anywhere from 10 to 20% off. I am aware that there are some people who are boycotting Loblaws companies and it probably caused a drop in revenue, but there could also be uncertainty in the minds of consumers, causing them to consume less or cheaper things.
Modifying the “basket” and then still presenting “compared to last year” figures is useless and obvious manipulation.
Canada nuked the telecom sector.