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If it feels like your digital wallet is getting a little thinner this holiday season, it's because it is as online inflation intensifies amid ongoing global supply chain bottlenecks.
Online prices for November rose 3.5% year-over-year, according to new data from Adobe on Thursday, marking the highest increase since 2014. The figure also represents the 18th consecutive month of year-over-year online inflation.
“Ongoing supply chain constraints and durable consumer demand have underpinned the record high inflation in e-commerce, with apparel seeing high volumes of out-of-stock messages online compared to other categories,” said Patrick Brown, Adobe vice president of growth marketing and insights. “With offline prices surging in the Consumer Price Index, however, it is still cheaper to shop online for categories such as toys, computers and sporting goods.”
Prices for most major merchandise categories tracked by Adobe surged in November.
Apparel prices popped 17.3% in the month. For the past eight months, Adobe notes, online prices for apparel have risen by over 9% year-over-year. Grocery prices increases 3.9% year-over-year. Appliance prices increased 4% from the prior year.
Two categories saw price relief in November, reflecting seasonal discounts by merchants. Prices for electronics and toys fell 0.4% and 2.9%, respectively, year-over-year.
In total, 11 of the categories tracked by Adobe for online prices saw year-over-year increases for November.
Not much relief is in sight on the inflation front, either.
Wall Street expects the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for November to show a headline 6.8% increase when it's reported on Friday.
"So tomorrow's [CPI] numbers will be ugly. All sources of inflation are pushing up the November report. We have got the supply chain re-accelerating because of the disruptions from the Delta variant. That is going to be a big chunk of it. Used car prices are going to be a huge bump yet again. But there are other things like rent that are more confirmation that the [economic] cycle is really strong. Then you layer on top of that a big energy [price] hit," explained Macropolicy Perspectives president and founder Julia Coronado on Yahoo Finance Live.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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