Americans face the highest inflation in the last four decades, North Texas businesses and residents struggle to keep up

Dallas, Texas – The inflation continues to soar across the country causing a lot of problems for both businesses and customers who are trying to cut down on everything because the everyday life is getting way more expensive compared to what it used to be before the pandemic.

While customers can cut down some activities like eating out and hanging with friends, buying a new car, paying more expensive gas or purchasing everyday groceries can’t be avoided.

“Gas prices, it’s a major increase,” Jenny Walls said.

This is second month in a row the country faces the highest inflation in the last four decades and it looks like the situation is not going to improve anytime soon.

According to the latest data, last month’s prices were higher for 7.5% in general, something that people are definitely noticing in their bills.

“I think we all could use a bit of a break,” Briteny Demny said.

Once the country reopened in the early summer months and people started to go out and spend more money, the rising demand caused the prices to increase which led to the start of the inflation. Although many believed the inflation will slow down in the upcoming months, that didn’t happen and we are currently seeing the highest inflation rates in decades.

Experts believe there are several problems causing the markets’ disruptions driven by the pandemic. According to them, the supply chain issues, global COVID disruptions, wage hikes, and increased demand for products continue to push prices up.

“Everything is going up, nothing is going down,” said Tom Melesky, owner of Press Box Grill in Downtown Dallas.

Melesky has been trying to keep the same prices to customers for a long time, but the food prices have gotten so high that he is now forced to rise the final prices because he can’t keep up with it anymore.

“We’ve held off for as long as we could, but I cannot continue to absorb all of these price increases,” Melesky said.

In addition to that, Malesky says he is about to increase his employees’ wages as he wants to make sure his employees can handle higher prices when they get home from work.

“I pay everybody what they are worth. Everyone in the kitchen is going to be getting increases at some point. Hopefully tied with price increases on the menu,” he said.

While for customers is easy to stay home instead of eating out in an effort to save money, there are things like groceries, gas prices and daily services that can’t be avoided. In addition to them, cars are selling high above their real value because of shortage, several-months long problem for customers who are into buying new vehicle.

“Every sector is being impacted, and so that means that it’s very hard for consumers to just avoid it,” SMU economist Mike Davis explained.

And while people are hoping for a break soon, Melesky is a little less optimistic.

“Prices never go back down. Nobody says, ‘I am making too much money and I am going to reduce my prices,’” he said.