by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
But it still won’t cover the dollar’s actual loss of purchasing power.
Among the inflation data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which is used to calculate the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits.
For August, the CPI-W jumped 5.8% year-over-year. In July, it had jumped by 6.0%, in June by 6.1%. The summer readings are the highest since July 2008, and before then, since 1990: