Food is slowly becoming a luxury. Food prices rose by 20.3 percent in October 2022. The general inflation rate has risen to 10.4 percent. Bad times for pensioners, as their pensions have risen significantly less.
For pensioners on a budget – and there are millions of them – food price inflation is a disaster because their pensions are worth less and less. The latest pension increase at 1. July can not even come close to compensating for inflation. Double-digit food inflation hits them particularly hard.
10.4 percent inflation nationwide
Nationwide, inflation cracked the ten percent mark in October, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office. From April to October, inflation rose from 7.4 to 10.4 percent. Inflation s rates at this level were not previously seen in reunified Germany. In the old federal states, you have to go back in the time series to the winter of 1973/1974 to find similarly high values. At that time, petroleum prices had risen sharply as a result of the first oil crisis. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, prices for energy in particular have risen noticeably and have a significant impact on the high inflation rate. For example, energy prices rose by 43.0 percent in October 2022 compared with the same month a year earlier.
Inflation disaster for pensioners
This development is a disaster for pensioners in the West in particular, as they had to accept a zero increase in 2021 and make do with a 5.35 percent pension increase this year. They are now feeling the effects of the European Central Bank's (ECB) misguided policy. In 2022, it's coming thick and fast – the pension increase in 2021 failed to materialize, but inflation is starting to trot along instead. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the inflation rate in Germany – measured as the change in the consumer price index (CPI) compared to the same month of the previous year – was 7.4 percent in April 2022, and is now already ten percent. The upward trend in prices is becoming steadier.
This means that inflation in April 2022 will reach a new high since German unification. In the former West Germany, the last time there were similarly high inflation rates was in the fall of 1981, when petroleum prices rose sharply as a result of the First Gulf War between Iraq and Iran.
Consumers can use the Federal Statistical Office's personal inflation calculator to calculate their monthly consumer spending for individual goods sectors according to their own consumption behavior and calculate a personal inflation rate.
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