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New study claims Atlanta has the fifth highest inflation of any city in the nation

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach market got the top spot on the list, while Chicago and San Francisco ranked as two of the cities with the lowest inflation.

ATLANTA — A new study claims Atlanta and the metro area ranked fifth in the nation for inflation. According to a WalletHub analysis, the metro area has seen a 1.10% increase in inflation in the last two months and a 4.40% increase compared to last year.

Atlanta resident Ariel Alba said he's not surprised.

"From where it was, everything now is more expensive," Alba said. "Everything went up... food, groceries, gas, a lot of stuff."

Raymond Hill, a retired professor from Emory's Goizueta School of Business, said that while that is accurate, inflation is also rising across the nation.

"Everybody knows that inflation is unacceptably high and Atlanta is just a little bit higher than the rest of the country in terms of inflation. But it's not something that is really noticeable," he explained. "It's about a 3.7% increase for the rest of the country. Nobody is going to notice a 4/10th of a percent increase. But obviously, everybody's noticing inflation in the United States because it's higher than it needs to be."

Hill said Atlanta's economy is doing well and because of that more people are moving to the city. In turn, that creates more demand and a rise in some prices.

“We’ve got lots of job creation," Hill said. "So we know that the migration is coming out of the San Francisco's and New York's and Chicago's and heading into the southeast. The migration puts pressure on housing prices. We should be happy that we’re only seeing marginally more inflation than the rest of the country and that we’re still a very relatively low-cost place to live.” 

As an Atlanta resident, Frank Lightner believes that's why his rent has gone up.

“You’ve gotta give us a gap when it comes to them charging us a lot more for rent. Everything is going up so consequentially, everything is," he said.

The Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach market got the top spot on the list for similar reasons, Hill said. 

Chicago and San Francisco ranked as two of the cities with the lowest inflation.

“We can run our economy like San Francisco or Chicago or New York and get everybody to leave. And then inflation will be very low in Atlanta, particularly housing inflation. But we don't want to do that. So we should be very happy," Hill said.

Gov. Brian Kemp temporarily suspended Georgia's gas tax last month, extending that suspension through Nov. 11 to help with soaring inflation.

"There's very little aside from lifting the gas tax that a governor of a state can do," Hill added. "They just can't address that because all food prices [nationwide] are going up."

Hill said that while the future of inflation is uncertain, it is important people don't confuse inflation with price levels.

"Prices aren't going to go down," he elaborated. "Maybe the prices of gasoline, I think, will go down because I think we’ll see that. But prices aren’t going to go down, it’s the rate of increase of the prices that’s slowing down."

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