• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 10, 2022

U.S. inflation continues to climb. The consumer price index rose 7.5% in the 12-month period ending in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

The outlook was worse than the economic forecast, and shows the steepest annual price increase since February 1982, per the data.

Adobe also released data today announcing the latest online inflation numbers from the Adobe Digital Price Index (DPI).

The cost to buy products online rose 2.7% year-over-year (YoY) and 1.1% month-over-month (MoM) in January 2022, marking the twentieth consecutive month of YoY online inflation.

December 2021 prices rose 3.1% YoY, contributing to a record high holiday season, during which online prices in November 2021 increased 3.5% YoY.

Patrick Brown, vice president of growth marketing and insights at Adobe, noted that categories like groceries are online sectors that continue to hit new records.

Groceries in January saw prices at the highest annual increase at 5.8% YoY, marking two years of online inflation for the category.

Medical equipment and supplies rose 8.2% YoY, a record high that coincides with the surge of the COVID-19 Omicron variant. Prices for electronics continued to drop, falling 3.4% YoY.

The DPI powered by Adobe Analytics analyzes one trillion visits to retail sites and over 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories: electronics, apparel, appliances, books, toys, computers, groceries, furniture/bedding, tools/home improvement, home/garden, pet products, jewelry, medical equipment/supplies, sporting goods, personal care products, flowers/related gifts, non-prescription drugs and office supplies.

On a month-over-month basis, 15 of the 18 categories saw January price increases, with price drops seen in three categories -- including apparel, medical equipment/supplies and flowers/related gifts.