An inflation scare, workers get their fair share, and Nvidia’s billion-dollar affairs

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

N-P-R.

Wailin Wong (0:06)

This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Wailin Wong.

Ricky Mulvey (0:09)

I'm Ricky Mulvey.

Adrian Ma (0:10)

And I'm Adrian Ma.

Wailin Wong (0:11)

TGIF, for it is once again time for Indicators of the Week. It is our weekly look at numbers from the news that made us curious about the economy.

Adrian Ma (0:25)

This week, we have the latest CPI report, which is disturbing some economists, hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen wages recovered, and an expensive affair.

Wailin Wong (0:36)

An affair to remember after the break.

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Wailin Wong (1:59)

It's indicators of the week. Adrian, you want to start us off?

Adrian Ma (2:02)

I do. My indicator is 0.4 percent. According to the numbers released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 0.4 percent is how much the consumer price index has increased in the month of October.

Wailin Wong (2:16)

What is it on the year now?

Adrian Ma (2:18)

Well, funny thing you should ask, there is no year-over-year number this time around.

Wailin Wong (2:23)

Because of the shutdown.

Adrian Ma (2:25)

Because of the shutdown this time last year.

Wailin Wong (2:27)

That's so kooky.

Ricky Mulvey (2:28)

I'm so used to hearing the year-on-year figure.

Adrian Ma (2:31)

Which is to say, even though we don't have a year-over-year CPI figure, 0.4 percent is higher than a lot of economists were expecting.

This was driven in large part by higher food and energy costs. And this is also starting to really concern some economists. For instance, Austin Goolsbee, the president of the Chicago Fed, he spoke on PBS NewsHour this week. And I think his reaction to the latest inflation numbers is really worth paying attention to.

Austin Goolsbee (3:02)

Well, it's another distressing report. Borderline disturbing.

Wailin Wong (3:06)

If Austin Goolsbee is saying that something is distressing, I am paying attention.

Adrian Ma (3:12)

The Gools usually seems unflappable, right? But he seems a little flapped. Part of what Goolsbee talked about was that oil prices have played a role in rising prices, even though we've seen them come down a little in the past couple of weeks.

So have tariffs, of course. Though, interestingly, he said that he would have thought that the impact of tariffs on goods prices would have faded by now. But that hasn't happened.

Austin Goolsbee (3:34)

Services inflation is not coming down, is probably not mostly driven by oil prices or tariffs or things that might be transitory. And so we've got a real inflation issue on our hands.

Adrian Ma (3:51)

And another thing Goolsbee said was that these things like oil prices, tariffs, these are considered what economists call cost side drivers of inflation. But he said he's also concerned about demand side inflation tied to the data center boom. You know, demand for things like memory chips and equipment has gone way up because of the AI data center boom and it's affecting the price for things like laptops and video game consoles and smartphones. And he's worried that this is starting to put upward pressure on overall prices, not just products and services that are AI adjacent.

Wailin Wong (4:24)

Everyone hang on to your RAM.

Adrian Ma (4:25)

Wailin, why don't you go next?

Wailin Wong (4:26)

My indicator is $960 million.

That is the amount of stolen wages that were recovered from employers in 2025 This number comes from the Economic Policy Institute. It's a pro-worker think tank. So that's almost $1 billion in stolen wages. And that's just the amount that's been recovered. The EPI says the actual amount of stolen wages is much bigger than $1 billion.