The Bay Area inflation rate, which has crushed consumers beneath the weight of sky-high prices, cooled off in a big way in October, rising at its slowest annual pace in more than two years, the government reported Tuesday.
The consumer price index in the Bay Area rose at an annual rate of just 2.8% in October, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Electricity services — such as those provided by utility behemoths like PG&E — have skyrocketed in cost in the Bay Area, however, a grim counterpoint to the otherwise hopeful trends in overall inflation, the report shows.
The nationwide inflation rate rose at a yearly pace of 3.2% in October, the federal labor agency reported.
The 2.8% rise in Bay Area prices compared to the year before was the slowest rate of annual increase since February 2021, when the region’s inflation rate rose 1.6%.
Despite the improvement in consumer prices generally, the latest inflation report portends a forbidding landscape for anyone who uses electricity in the Bay Area that’s provided by a power company — such as PG&E, the region’s utility leviathan.
Over the one-year period that ended in October, the cost of electricity provided by a utility like PG&E rocketed higher by an eye-popping 14.1%
The ominous report on electricity costs arrives just ahead of an anticipated decision by state regulators to authorize — yet again — a big increase in PG&E monthly bills for the company’s customers.