Why Businesses Are Passing Their Rising Costs On To Consumers The price of groceries rose almost 12% in March compared with the same month a year ago, while gasoline prices increased almost 40%.
Anyone shopping for groceries or driving a car in Honolulu in the past year has seen it: the sharply rising costs of food and gasoline. In a state with a cost of living that’s already among the nation’s highest and a large percentage of households living paycheck to paycheck, the changes are especially hard to endure.
Groceries in Honolulu cost 11.7% more in March than they did in the same month in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Items like cereal, meat, poultry and fish rose nearly 15%. Gasoline prices were up just less than 40%.
Altogether the bureau’s consumer price index, covering a wide range of goods and services, rose 7.5%, 5.3% excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be unusually volatile.
