Inflation surges as consumer prices leap 5%, biggest jump since 2008

Inflation continued to surge in May, with consumer prices accelerating at the fastest pace in more than 12 years as the economy emerges from the pandemic, the feds said Thursday.

The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, which measures a basket of goods and services as well as energy and food costs, jumped 5 percent in May from a year earlier. That’s higher than April’s 4.2 percent year-over-year rise in prices, and the biggest 12-month rise since August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the US into the worst recession it had seen since the Great Depression.