Numerator: Slowing inflation doesn't ease consumers' concern
Inflation cooled a bit in August, but consumers are still grappling with high prices of household goods.
The August 2026 Numerator Consumer Goods Price Index (CGPI) revealed that prices for everyday household purchases decreased 0.1% in August, following a 0.4% decrease in July and a 0.6% increase in June. In August, prices for everyday goods were up 2.2% compared to a year ago, down from 2.6% in July.
Overall, Numerator found that prices for everyday household goods were up 33.2% since January 2018 as of August.
Although inflation may be cooling, consumers aren't feeling much relief, according to Numerator. In the company's August 2026 Economic Sentiment Tracker of over 2,000 U.S. consumers, 40.5% identified rising prices as their top concern for the coming year, surpassing the previous record high reached in May 2026.
Two groups, low-income and Gen Z consumers, continue to experience higher levels of inflation for everyday household goods. Prices have increased 34.9% and 38.8%, respectively, for those groups since January 2018, compared to the 33.2% national average. Despite facing higher cumulative inflation, low-income consumers experienced the slowest year-over-year wage growth in August at 1.2%, compared to the 2.2% U.S. average.
“Prices for everyday goods continued to cool in August, even as gas prices climbed back above $4 a gallon,” said Paul Stanley, senior economist at Numerator. “Across all groups, low-income households saw the sharpest slowdown in prices for everyday goods, which is a welcome relief for consumers who are often hit hardest by rising gas prices.”
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Additional insights from Numerator include the following:
•Quick-service restaurant prices have increased 53.1% since January 2018, well above the 33.2% rise across the overall consumer basket.
•Regionally, the inflation gap has closed in July between the South, West and Midwest. However, the Northeast continues to see the smallest cumulative price increase of the four regions.
Numerator’s CPI is calculated from an average of approximately 7 million verified, item-level transactions each month provided by a panel of 200,000 geographically and demographically representative U.S. households. These data include purchases across categories such as grocery, household goods, and health and beauty.
The Numerator CGPI’s year-over-year inflation measure has a 0.93 correlation with the PCE Food and Beverage index since 2019.
