Housing and transportation lead CPI drop

The prices that northern Utahns pay for the goods and services they buy took their largest drop in almost a year in January. The drop was due mostly to a decrease in transportation and housing prices, according to the Zions Bank Wasatch Front Consumer Price Index (CPI) released last week.

The CPI decreased 0.2 percent from December to January, the largest drop since March 2018.{mprestriction ids="1,3"} Year-over-year, the CPI is still up 4.8 percent, while the national Consumer Price Index has increased 1.6 percent since January of last year.

Housing prices dipped 0.3 percent in January, due largely to changes in apartment rental rates. Transportation prices fell 0.7 percent, mostly due to a drop in gas prices, which are at their lowest point since February 2017.

Housing prices continue to be the largest contributors to year-over-year price increases, rising 8.7 percent since January 2018. Transportation prices have increased 2.6 percent in the past year. On the other hand, medical care prices have grown 12.1 percent since January 2018, their largest year-over-year rise since Zions Bank and the Cicero Group began tracking the data in 2010.

“Gas prices have dropped both because of seasonal demand fluctuations and because of global oil production,” said Randy Shumway, chairman and partner at the Cicero Group, a Salt Lake City research firm that does data collection and analysis for the CPI. “Producers of oil, both domestic and abroad, have kept their production high for months. That will likely change in the coming months, so don’t expect prices to stay this low for long.”

Even though healthcare prices have been growing, they are still a relatively small part of Utahns’ overall expenditures, the CPI data shows. Medical care makes up about 6.4 percent of Utahns’ expenses, which comes after housing (38.3 percent); transportation (17.1 percent); food, both at-home and away-from-home at 7.4 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively; and education/communication (6.7 percent).{/mprestriction}