Supercore inflation, Bumble valuation and Pooh's repatriation

Adrian Ma (0:01)

N-P-R.

Darian Woods (0:06)

Gah!

Adrian Ma (0:08)

Whalen, is that an animatronic bird?

Wailin Wong (0:11)

Oh, why yes, this is Molly, my one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird automaton. She plays an important role in our weekly roundup of the most interesting economic headlines, also known as Indicators of the Week.

This week, we're going to tell you about inflation, Bumble's latest pivot, and another plaything that is also in a bit of a custody battle.

Darian Woods (0:38)

Unlike Kelly Clarkson and a certain Brooklyn toy shop, we will be back after the break.

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Wailin Wong (1:57)

It's Indicators of the Week. Adrian, how about you go first?

Adrian Ma (2:00)

OK, my indicator is 4.6 percent. 4.6 is the annualized rate of so-called super core inflation over the past three months.

Darian Woods (2:10)

Sounds like something Elon Musk came up with.

Adrian Ma (2:13)

Well, this term is actually based on data from the latest Consumer Price Index Report. And when we often talk about the CPI, we often talk about the headline inflation number. That is how much goods and services have changed in price over the past year.

In September, by the way, that number came in at 3.7 percent, which is the second month in a row that it's ticked up. But this number is really just a kind of bird's eye view of inflation. And if you want to understand the underlying forces, you can zoom in even more and you could look at just goods, or you could look at just energy, or you can look at what is called super core inflation, which just looks at certain kinds of services.

Wailin Wong (2:55)

Yeah, like lawyers, health care, manicurists.

Adrian Ma (3:00)

Landscapers.

Wailin Wong (3:01)

Mm-hmm.

Adrian Ma (3:03)

This would make a perfect family feud question. Five things that people say belong in super core services inflation.

Darian Woods (3:10)

Nice.

Wailin Wong (3:10)

And then you know some confused person is going to buzz in and be like, refrigerator! And it's like, no, we're talking about services.

Darian Woods (3:16)

Services.

Adrian Ma (3:17)

I respect points for creativity.

The thing about the price of these kinds of services is that they can change relatively quickly when you compare them to things like the cost of housing. So by focusing on the price of services, economists can see how much people's wages are driving inflation. And when you think about it, it's like employers raising employees' wages, we tend to say, that's a good thing, right? People are getting a raise.

Wailin Wong (3:42)

Unless that leads to an inflationary spiral. We don't want that.

Adrian Ma (3:45)

It's a good thing.

Darian Woods (3:46)

It's a good thing. Full stop. Raise the money. Everyone here gets a raise.

Adrian Ma (3:50)

Well, this is the rub, right? Because employers may decide, okay, I'll give everybody a raise, but then I'll just pass that cost on to the customer in the form of higher prices. And if those wages don't increase at the same level, well, that's not good for employees, right? And this is kind of what we're seeing right now.

Supercore services inflation up by a rate of 4.6%, and wages over the past year have only gone up 3%.

Wailin Wong (4:16)

Okay, so wages not keeping up with supercore inflation. Thank you, Adrian. Now, Ricky, what do you have?

Darian Woods (4:23)

Okay, so remember a couple of months ago on Indicators of the Week, we talked about how bad things were at Bumble, the dating app company.

Wailin Wong (4:31)

Yes, I remember because they were like, new plan, it used to be that women always had to message first, and that was kind of the app's whole thing, and then they were like, never mind.