Key Takeaways
- Long-term contracts slow price adjustments.
- Wages anchor service costs.
- Inflation declines unevenly.
Services prices behave like an anchor, holding parts of the inflation basket in place even as other components shift.
Housing leases, labor agreements, and regulated pricing structures create resistance to rapid change.
What the data does not yet show is a release of these anchors. So far, evidence suggests slow movement rather than reversal.