The picture looked homey enough, mom and dad at the table in the dining room, dad looking into the kitchen at his daughter and son and the family dog . . . and The Wall Street Journal’s photographer, Kristen Zies. 🙂

Decent looking middle-class home, kitchen with the light grey cabinets which came into fashion not long ago, grey-and-white quartz (?) countertop, stainless steel appliances, but, shudder!, laminate flooring. And, for Jake and Marie Tromberg, inflation has hit hard.

Inflation Hurts Most for the Things We Can’t Skimp On

Costs for child care, rent and car insurance are up. Inflation might be easing, but it doesn’t feel that way.

by Harriet Torey and Terell Wright | Monday, August 8, 2024 | 5:30 AM EDT

Inflation is slowing. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

After all, price increases for lots of items, like cable and shampoo, are indeed cooling. Prices for vehicles, gasoline, TVs and plane tickets have even dropped over the past year. And the overall pace of year-over-year inflation as measured by the Labor Department’s consumer-price index was down to 3% in its most recent reading—much, much lower than the recent high of 9.1% that it clocked two years ago.

But prices for many of the things that are hard to do without are still posting eye-watering increases. Rent and electricity bills are up 10% or more over the past two years, and car-insurance costs are up nearly 40%, according to the Labor Department’s index. Shoppers might be able to trade down from prime steak to cheaper cuts of meat at the supermarket, but they can’t really do the same thing with the water bill.

Car insurance? In Virginia, where the Tromburgs live, there’s a $600 non-compliance fee if you let your insurance lapse, and you still have to reinsure the vehicle. The Commonwealth may suspend your vehicle’s registration (license plates) and possibly your driver’s license. Insurance companies operating in the Commonwealth must notify the Department of Motor Vehicles if a vehicle’s insurance lapses.

“We’re beginning to run out of rope in how much we can substitute out,” said David Bieri, an economist and professor at Virginia Tech.

Rising prices have been front and center in the U.S. over the past three years, affecting how Americans feel about the economy and how they are planning to vote. A softening jobs market will only amplify their concerns.

I am reminded of 2016, when the government did everything it could to to persuade people that the economy was doing just fine, thank you very much, in their attempt to get Hillary Clinton elected:

Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%

by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT

Heather Long

Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is.The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.

It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.

But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those surveyed by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”

At the time, while the official unemployment number, U-3, was 4.9%, the U-6 unemployment number^[1]U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons … Continue reading was 9.6%, pretty much in line with what the Rutgers survey guessed. As George Orwell put it in 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Back to the Journal:

Families with young children are also paying higher prices for child care. Costs have risen 6.4% over the past two years, in line with the overall CPI. Because daycare bills can be as big as the rent payment or the mortgage, even a relatively small increase can feel like a lot.

The median price to put an infant in center-based care in 2022 was more than $1,400 a month in major metro areas, according to the Labor Department. A 6.4% increase puts that bill closer to $1,500.

(Brendan and Alexis) Madigan’s daycare costs have risen much faster. The daycare bill for their older daughter shot up last month to $1,650 from $1,200 a month. Daycare for their younger daughter, who starts in two weeks, will be $1,800 a month. They searched for cheaper options but quickly realized that the price was the standard.

“I would have hoped that where my career path is at, and with my wife working as well, that we would have some financial flexibility,” said Madigan, 32.

Doing some back-of-the-envelope “cipherin'”, as Jethro Bodine would have put it, that comes out to $3,450 per month, or $41,400 a year. Assuming a total tax bite of 33%, that would require gross earnings of $55,062 just to pay for daycare! Does it really make sense for both of the Madigans to work, just so their kids can be reared by daycare workers? The Madigans live in Durham, North Carolina, a metropolitan area to be sure, but not the most expensive place in the US.

There’s more at the Journal’s original, mostly going over statistics and throwing in some human-interest stories, but the message is clear: inflation has come down significantly on the things people do not have to buy every week or every month. But on the expenses of daily life in America, people are having to pay more and more.