Florida is America’s inflation hotspot because of a persistent problem with sky-high housing costs.
The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area has the highest inflation rate of metro areas with more than 2.5 million residents, with a 9% inflation rate for the 12 months ended in April.
That’s more than double the national average of 4%, according to data from the Consumer Price Index. The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro had the third-highest inflation rate in the country, at 7.3% for the year ended in May.
Other metro areas, however, have seen some welcome progress. Minneapolis had an inflation rate of 1.8% in May from a year earlier, the lowest of the 23 metro areas for which the Labor Department publishes inflation data. Urban Hawaii had the second lowest inflation rate at 2% — mirroring the Federal Reserve’s target for its preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index.
