- Daily essentials are inflating faster than broad inflation indexes, making life harder for many Americans.
- The ALICE Essentials Index shows a 7.3% annual increase in basic costs from 2021 to 2023.
- Rising costs are outpacing wage growth, affecting the West and Southeast the most.
It's no secret that Americans have been feeling the pinch of inflation everywhere they go — but daily essentials are only getting pricier. It could be making workers feel even worse.
The latest report from research organization United For ALICE — which tracks asset-limited, income-constrained, but employed Americans — looks at how the costs of basic essentials are rising. ALICE Americans make above the federal poverty level but not enough to comfortably afford all their daily expenses, often making too much to qualify for government assistance.
The ALICE Essentials Index, which includes housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare, and technology costs, has risen by a projected 7.3% annually from 2021 to 2023; comparatively, CPI has risen by 6.1%.
"CPI measures our whole economy and the goods and services that people of all income levels purchase, whereas ALICE Essentials is only the basics," Stephanie Hoopes, national director at United For ALICE, told Business Insider. "Those basics have been increasing even more" than broader prices, she said.
And those costs are even outpacing the rapid wage growth that lower-earning Americans have seen.
Data on the annual rate of change between 2021 and projected 2023 values for the ALICE Essentials Index suggests that prices have increased most in the West and Southeast. Arizona's annual rate of change for prices of the basic goods and services tracked by the essentials index during this time period was 10.4%, while Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina were all above 9%.
The Midwest and Northeast were less impacted by rising prices for essentials, though many of these states were still in the 6% to 7% range.
Even so, prices are still rising everywhere, as the index jumped in each region since 2021 — rising faster than most years prior. While United For ALICE anticipates the index plateauing in the South, the Midwest, West, and Northeast are expected to continue increasing through 2024.
Since most inflation indexes focus on urban areas, rural areas are often omitted from many inflation numbers. The ALICE Essentials Index for rural areas was slightly higher than that for urban areas, at 7.5% and 7.2%, respectively.
Americans who are ALICE were already struggling to get by: Business Insider has spoken to many employed Americans — including a couple who bring home over six figures — who still can't make ends meet.
Many are excluded from federal assistance, frequently tied to an outdated federal poverty line. The poverty line is based on a formula from the 1960s that estimated people spent about a third of their income on food, which is now only 13%.
"Long before everybody else was upset about inflation, ALICE was dealing with inflation," Hoopes said.
There's also good news in the economy, especially for those with lower wages: Jobs numbers have been encouraging, as the economy added 272,000 jobs last month — almost 100,000 more than expectations. Healthcare and leisure and hospitality were two sectors seeing the largest job increases. Still, ALICE Americans tend to be overrepresented in these roles, as many pay below the ALICE threshold of about $55,000 a year.
Rising prices for essentials might be a factor in many Americans' economic gloom.
"I think this really helps explain the disconnect between the broad macroeconomic indicators that are showing a strong economy and that personal disconnect that we see on the ground," Hoopes said, adding: "Just the mere fact that working full time in some of these jobs that are hard jobs, you're not able to support a basic family budget — I think that explains a lot of dissatisfaction and the disconnect."
Are you struggling to keep up with the cost of daily essentials? Contact these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].