The quoted inflation number is a weighted average of the whole economy — roughly a third of it is shelter, and the categories that wrecked your weekly spend are small slices of the index. Below is what the actual series you buy every week did — cumulative levels, not rates — next to your paycheck.
Cumulative price change over each administration’s actual months in office — not annualized, not cherry-picked months, and the annualized-equivalent column is there so different-length windows are comparable. Trump 2 is 20 months and counting.
| Window | Months | Headline CPI (cumulative) | Annualized equivalent | Wages | Groceries | Electricity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trump 1Jan 2017 - Jan 2021 | 48 | +7.7% | +1.9% | +15.1% | +6.2% | +0.1% |
| BidenJan 2021 - Jan 2025 | 48 | +21.4% | +5.0% | +19.7% | +23.3% | +52.0% |
| Trump 2 (so far)Jan 2025 - Sep 2026 | 20 | +6.1% | +3.6% | +5.5% | +3.5% | +63.9% |
All rows: BLS CPI-U NSA indices and average hourly earnings (production & nonsupervisory). Levels, monthly.
The honest read: the 2021–23 surge happened on Biden’s watch — +21.4% cumulative headline, groceries +23.3%, electricity +52%, peaking at 9.1% YoY in Jun 2022. Nothing on this page disputes that.
But the pain you’re feeling right now isn’t that surge. Headline YoY is 3.74 and groceries are rising at just 1.8 again. It’s that the surge never came back down — and since Jan 2025, electricity is up another +63.9% and gasoline another +39.1% on top of the permanent level. A lower inflation rate means prices climb slower. The level is forever.
“Inflation cooling” means the bars stop growing fast — not that they shrink. Each bar starts at what $100 bought in Jan 2021. The dark part is the old normal; the colored part is what’s been added since, and it stays.
Wages (+26.3) roughly matched the average cart — on paper. But the average hides the energy stack, and energy is a regressive multiplier: it feeds farming, freight, packaging and manufacturing, and lower-income households spend roughly twice the income share on food and energy as high-income ones.
Three different things all get called “inflation”:
1. The rate (YoY %). What the news quotes. Down to 3.74. Technically fine.
2. The level (cumulative). What your wallet compares against memory. Groceries sit 27.6 above Jan 2021 and will sit there until something deflates them. Memory is a terrible inflation gauge — but it’s the correct one for “can I afford things?”
3. The mix. Headline CPI weights shelter at roughly a third of the basket. Your actual budget is your actual budget: if yours is groceries + gasoline + electricity heavy, your personal CPI ran nothing like the headline for five straight years.
The headline index is a weighted average of the whole economy. Set what you spent in Jan 2021, and see what the cumulative levels did to it. Drag the sliders.
Pay grows by the official average-wage series (+26.3). Everything else uses real cumulative category growth since Jan 2021.
Year-over-year change, monthly, Jan 2021 → Sep 2026. The calm line the Fed watches is core CPI (ex food & energy). Watch what electricity and gasoline did after Jan 2025 — while the headline printed 3-and-something.
Electricity YoY path: −4.7% (Jun 2025) → +4.1% (Sep 2025) → +7.4% (Dec 2025) → +44.3% (Mar 2026) → +74.2% (Sep 2026). Gasoline: −0.5% (Sep 2025) → +34.2% (Sep 2026). Core CPI never left the 2s. (Oct 2025 CPI was never published — the delayed release that cycle — so that month is interpolated for chart continuity only.)
Average hourly earnings vs the things you can’t skip — expressed as hours of work, which cancels out dollar-trickery in both directions.
Cumulative, Jan 2021 → Sep 2026. Yes, eggs were the meme — the meme undersold beef.
The one-line answer to “why does it feel so brutal”: 3.74 is the average climb rate of a price level already ~29% above your mental anchor year — and the two categories growing fastest right now (electricity +74.2 YoY, gasoline +34.2 YoY) are the ones you pay weekly, can’t defer, and see printed on every receipt and bill. Rate down. Level up. Mix painful. All three at once.