JUST THE FACTS PLEASE: What drives up inflation

Intro:

What's driving rising inflation? 

As prices rise, currency loses value and doesn't have as much purchasing power as it once did. Americans have been aware of that waning power over the past months; in March, prices in the US rose 8.5%, the highest in 40 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics factors the prices of everyday consumer goods and services into the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI-U is the most-used version of this measure, focusing on prices in urban areas. Costs for goods and services vary nationwide, so the CPI-U averages spending across multiple cities to account for price differences. >> Learn more about the CPI in this new article and do your own inflation analysis with the CPI calculator.

CPI-U prices are weighted based on their percent of average total consumer spending. For example, many average households spend 11.9% of their income on food, while average single-parent households spend 13.5%. Food and beverage prices are 14.26% of the CPI-U.   Transportation commodities like new and used vehicles, and vehicle parts or equipment, which are 8.8% of the total CPI-U, increased by 24% since last year. Used cars and trucks alone were 41.2% more expensive.    Energy prices increased by 25.6% overall from February 2021, but gasoline and other motor fuel prices increased by 38.1%. Energy goods and services account for 7.3% of the CPI-U.

CPI data pinpoints how purchasing power and prices change over time to make goods and services comparable across years. See for yourself with this interactive CPI inflation calculator at USAFacts. The growing role of solar energy  Solar energy is one of the nation's fastest-growing clean energy sources. There are more than 3 million solar energy installations in the US, and about 1 million have been built in the last two years. In advance of Earth Day later this week, USAFacts has the numbers on where this growing energy source is produced and how much it costs.

When it comes to cost per kilowatts produced, solar costs more to build than most other energy sources. In 2019, the average installation cost of solar energy was $1,796 per kilowatt produced, higher than facilities running on petroleum liquid or natural gas. It's also costlier than building new wind power production.   Solar farms and other utility-scale facilities produced enough electricity to power over 10 million homes last year. Solar farms generated seven times more energy in 2021 than in 2014.   Solar energy produced through homes, businesses, and other small-scale facilities generated enough electricity to power 4.4 million homes last year, four times higher than in 2014.   California leads the US in small-scale solar installations, housing almost 40% of all small-scale solar photovoltaic technology. From 2016 to 2019, the state added 5.3 gigawatts of new small-scale solar capacity, the most in the nation. Learn more about solar energy production here, and stay tuned for more energy data in the third annual State of the Earth report, coming soon.   The 2022 10-K is here Today is Tax Day, and USAFacts is marking the day with the sixth annual Government 10-K. This 10-K is the most comprehensive accounting of how taxpayer dollars are collected, spent, and the outcomes of that spending. Whether the country was served well by its government or not, that's for you to decide. Dive into the data now. One last fact

Between August 27 and November 26, 2021, 11,799 eviction cases were filed in Las Vegas, 26% higher than its historical average. Elsewhere, eviction filings were 75% of the historical average for 11 cities. Ten of these 11 cities did not have protections against evictions on the books.