PolicyMarket noteFriday 6 November 2026, 09:30 UTC
Will prices go down? Not to 2019 levels: that takes a 24% fall, last seen in 1929–33. Pay is up 35% since 2019 to prices’ 31.5%, but lost ground this year.
Will prices go down? It is the question of the week. Democrats won both houses of Congress on Tuesday after a campaign about the cost of living, and voters now want to know whether the shopping bill will shrink. The data give a clear answer: prices can fall here and there, but not back to where they were in 2019, and the times they have fallen across the board were times nobody would want back.
US consumer prices in September were 31.5% higher than their average in 2019, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. To return to that level, prices would have to fall by about 24%.
A fall of that size has happened once in the last hundred years. From 1929 to 1933, during the Great Depression, average consumer prices fell by 24.6%, the BLS index going back to 1913 shows. That is almost exactly the fall needed today.
Since 1947, prices have been lower than a year earlier in only six years: 1949, 1950, 1954, 1955, 2009 and 2015. The deepest 12-month fall was 2.9%, in 1949. In 2009, the last real fall, prices were 2.1% lower than a year before at the bottom. It came with the worst recession since the 1930s, and the unemployment rate reached 10.0% that October, BLS figures show. In 2015, the fall was 0.2%, and it came from a collapse in the price of oil.
The reason is simple: prices fall across the board when buyers stop buying, and buyers stop when they lose jobs or fear losing them. Firms then cut prices, then wages, then staff. Debts do not shrink with prices, so households and firms find them harder to pay. That is why the Federal Reserve aims for inflation of 2% a year, not zero, its statement of goals says. The Fed can slow price rises. It does not try to reverse them.
So a return to 2019 prices is not on offer from any party. What voters can get is slower price rises, falls in some prices, and pay that grows faster than prices.
Single prices fall all the time. Gasoline is the clearest case: a gallon of regular has dropped to $4.15, from $4.50 in May, as crude oil has fallen. Groceries have calmed too. Food bought for the home cost 32.8% more in September than in 2019, but only 1.8% more than a year earlier, BLS figures show: the big jump is behind us, even if the higher level stays.
Policy can move some prices. Tariffs are taxes on imports, and as we showed on 9 October, goods prices would have fallen without them. Congress can change taxes and subsidies. None of that brings back 2019, but it can take some pressure off.
Prices matter less than what people earn to pay them. Here the picture since 2019 is better than most voters feel. Average hourly earnings rose 35.0%, from $28.00 an hour in 2019 to $37.81 in September 2026, BLS payroll data show. Prices rose 31.5% over the same span, so an hour of average pay now buys about 2.7% more than it did in 2019.
The past year is the problem. Prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to September, and hourly pay 3.0%. Prices have outpaced pay over the past year in every month since April, our calculation from the same data shows, for the first time since early 2023. Much of that is the war’s push on energy prices. The same gap shows in the 2027 tax brackets, which rose 3.2%: ahead of pay, behind prices.
Our Wages since 2019 page for the United States follows pay against prices month by month.
Two releases will show where this goes. Today’s jobs report, due at 14:30 Tirane time, brings October’s hourly pay. Next Tuesday, 10 November, the BLS publishes October’s consumer prices. If pay grows faster than prices for a sustained stretch, affordability returns slowly, without prices ever going back to 2019. Our view: that slow route, not falling prices, is what voters can realistically expect.
This is analysis and opinion, not investment advice.
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RatesMarket noteTuesday 27 October 2026, 08:22 UTC
At the Fed meeting on 28 October 2026, futures price an 88% chance of no change. A rise to 4–4.25% by December is priced at 79%, after weak September jobs.
At the Fed meeting of October 2026, on 27 and 28 October, markets expect the Federal Reserve to leave rates alone. Futures on the federal funds rate put the chance of no change on Wednesday at 88.1% and of a quarter-point rise at 11.9%, on Central Bank Watch’s reading of the 26 October close. The decision is due at 2pm in Washington, 18:00 UTC, the Fed’s calendar shows.
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The lek has not bought so many euros since at least 1995, when Eurostat’s records begin. In September 2026 a euro cost 91.85 lek on average, the lowest monthly figure in those records. In 2019 it cost 123.01. Put the other way round, the lek now buys 33.9% more euros than it did in 2019, and 37.7% more dollars.
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