New data confirm pundits wrong on economy again, but at least they’re consistent
December 22, 2025 | J.D. Foster
Guess what! Inflation, growth, jobs: Conventional wisdom from America’s economic punditry was across-the-board wrong. Again.
At the year’s start, the punditry predicted that Trump’s tariffs would cause a surge of inflation and would likely trigger a recession. Well, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers on Thursday. Reuters’ polling of private economists predicted inflation would accelerate to 3.1% year-over-year, the fastest pace since 2023. The actual BLS figure came in at 2.7%, with core inflation even lower at 2.6%.
But the news gets better. Year-over-year inflation means it includes inflationary pressures from the end of Biden’s presidency. It’s a very lagging figure.
To understand what inflation’s doing now, and to filter out some of the data’s noise, a better gauge is to look at inflation over the last two months, which came in at 1.2% annualized, well below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
There is a small caveat to this good news. Due to the Schumer government shutdown, the BLS was unable to collect all the usual data for the CPI report, so some items were left out. The economists who predicted accelerating inflation are thus arguing that inflation would, with all the data, have been much higher and thus excusing their bad forecasts.
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/12/22/new-data-confirm-pundits-wrong-on-economy-again-but-at-least-theyre-consistent-1611697/
