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(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices are continuing to climb, causing new pain for Americans’ pocketbooks, as inflation tightens its grip on the economy and hobbles the post-pandemic recovery.

The consumer price index, which measures the prices consumers pay for a market basket of everyday goods and services, jumped 0.8% last month after rising 0.9% in October, the Department of Labor reported Friday. Over the last 12 months, the index climbed some 6.8% before seasonal adjustment. This marks the largest 12-month increase in nearly 40 years.

While inflation is already wreaking havoc on holiday shopping, it’s especially painful for households with limited means to absorb higher prices for essentials. Policymakers including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in recent weeks have also began walking back on assurances that it was likely a temporary, post-pandemic blip.

The so-called core index, a measure of all prices less the more volatile food and energy indices, rose 0.5% in November, building on a 0.6% increase in October. The core index climbed 4.9% over the last 12 months, the DOL said.

“Inflation is outpacing increases in household income and weighing heavily on consumer confidence, which is at a decade low,” Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate, said in a commentary to ABC News shortly after the data was released Friday. “It is only a matter of time before it impacts consumer spending in a material way.”

The energy index rose 33.3% over the last year after climbing 3.5% in November alone.

The food index jumped 6.1% over the last year and soared 0.7% in November.

The changes in the food and energy index mark the largest 12-month increase in at least 13 years, the DOL said.

Some of the largest contributors to soaring prices were increases in prices for gasoline, shelter, food, used and new vehicles and trucks.

Economists have attributed the rapidly climbing prices to supply-demand imbalances lingering from the pandemic shock to the economy, as labor shortages and supply chains issues result in supply not being able to keep up with the post-pandemic consumer demand for goods and services.

The painful price rises are also coming as many Americans prepare to celebrate the holidays with family and friends for the first time since a COVID-19 vaccine rolled out.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices are continuing to climb, causing new pain for Americans’ pocketbooks, as inflation tightens its grip on the economy and hobbles the post-pandemic recovery.

The consumer price index, which measures the prices consumers pay for a market basket of everyday goods and services, jumped 0.8% last month after rising 0.9% in October, the Department of Labor reported Friday. Over the last 12 months, the index climbed some 6.8% before seasonal adjustment. This marks the largest 12-month increase in nearly 40 years.

While inflation is already wreaking havoc on holiday shopping, it’s especially painful for households with limited means to absorb higher prices for essentials. Policymakers including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in recent weeks have also began walking back on assurances that it was likely a temporary, post-pandemic blip.

The so-called core index, a measure of all prices less the more volatile food and energy indices, rose 0.5% in November, building on a 0.6% increase in October. The core index climbed 4.9% over the last 12 months, the DOL said.

“Inflation is outpacing increases in household income and weighing heavily on consumer confidence, which is at a decade low,” Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate, said in a commentary to ABC News shortly after the data was released Friday. “It is only a matter of time before it impacts consumer spending in a material way.”

The energy index rose 33.3% over the last year after climbing 3.5% in November alone.

The food index jumped 6.1% over the last year and soared 0.7% in November.

The changes in the food and energy index mark the largest 12-month increase in at least 13 years, the DOL said.

Some of the largest contributors to soaring prices were increases in prices for gasoline, shelter, food, used and new vehicles and trucks.

President Joe Biden reacted to the report in a statement Friday, acknowledging that “prices are rising,” but noted that the data was collected earlier in the month of November, adding that “developments in the weeks after these data were collected last month show that price and cost increase are slowing, although not as quickly as we’d like.”

“Half of the price increases in this report are in cars and energy costs from November,” the president said. “Since then, we have seen significant energy price reductions.” He also noted that in recent weeks used car prices have trended downward in the wholesale market “which should translate into lower prices for Americans in the months ahead.”  “Even with this progress, price increases continue to squeeze family budgets,” Biden added. “We are making progress on pandemic-related challenges to our supply chain which make it more expensive to get goods on shelves, and I expect more progress on that in the weeks ahead.”

The president said that the challenge of rising prices underscores the importance of Congress passing his Build Back Better plan, which he said will help families by reducing how much they pay for health care, prescription drugs and child care.

Economists have attributed the rapidly climbing prices to supply-demand imbalances lingering from the pandemic shock to the economy, as labor shortages and supply chains issues result in supply not being able to keep up with the post-pandemic consumer demand for goods and services.

The painful price rises also are coming as many Americans prepare to celebrate the holidays with family and friends for the first time since a COVID-19 vaccine rolled out.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A now-defunct e-cigarette retailer has agreed to pay $50 million to resolve allegations it marketed and sold vaping products to minors by appealing to their social media preferences, taste for fruit flavors and penchant to listen to influencers.

The settlement agreement was announced Thursday by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, whose office accused Eonsmoke of “a coordinated advertising campaign intentionally targeted at consumers who were not of the minimum legal purchase age to purchase tobacco products” — which in Massachusetts is 21.

Eonsmoke directly sold e-cigarette products — including electronic nicotine devices, e-liquids, and nicotine pods — to underage consumers via its website, without conducting any age verification at the time of sale or delivery, the state said.

“Eonsmoke coordinated a campaign that intentionally targeted young people and sold dangerous and addictive vaping products directly to minors through their website,” Healey said in a news release announcing the settlement. “We were the first to take action against this company and its owners, and today we are holding them accountable and permanently stopping them from conducting these illegal practices in our state.”

Eonsmoke shut down in April 2020 amid increased regulatory scrutiny. Its co-owners, Gregory Grishayev and Michael Tolmach, have agreed to pay a combined $750,000 as part of the settlement. If either man wants to sell tobacco products in Massachusetts in the future, they must get authorization from the Food and Drug Administration and give notice to the state attorney general’s office.

Eonsmoke’s products contained some of the highest nicotine concentrations on the commercial market and came in a variety of sweet and fruit flavors.

Healey alleged it directly marketed vaping products to young people through social media sites such as Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, and included youth popular culture references, social media influencers, celebrity endorsers, cartoons and internet memes that intentionally minimized or omitted the fact that the vaping products contained nicotine.

Between 2015 and 2018, the company did not conduct any age verification of consumers purchasing vaping products from its website, according to the investigation. Until September 2018, when the attorney general’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter ordering Eonsmoke to stop selling its products in Massachusetts, underage youth across the state were able to freely purchase unlimited quantities of vaping products — some of whom were 15.

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(NEW YORK) — A year and a half into the global pandemic, with the Omicron variant lurking and holiday travel looming, many flight attendants say they’ve reached their breaking point with unruly passengers, many of whom still refuse to respect mask mandates.

“My job is not to manage you, the one passenger that constantly needs to be reminded to put their mask on. My job is to manage getting people where they need to go as quickly and safely as possible,” said Mitra Amirzadeh, a low-cost carrier flight attendant and Association of Flight Attendants member.

This @TSA sign at airport security checkpoints says it all. To sum it up: Act like a jerk and you’ll pay for it. pic.twitter.com/0Cp35mdBJl

— Lisa Farbstein, TSA Spokesperson (@TSA_Northeast) December 8, 2021

Dozens of videos over the past year have shown customers assaulting flight attendants, including one in which several passengers had to use duct tape to restrain an unruly man in his seat on a Frontier flight after he caused a disturbance with a flight attendant.

“Since the FAA started keeping track of reports of incidents like this on board, we’ve had more events in 2021 than we’ve had in the entire history of that record keeping in aviation,” Sara Nelson, president of the AFA and a flight attendant for two decades, told ABC News. That record keeping began in 1995.

About 85% of nearly 5,000 U.S. flight attendants said they’ve dealt with an unruly passenger in 2021, and 17% said they’ve been physically assaulted, according to a survey conducted by the AFA-CWA, AFL-CIO.

Since Jan. 1, the Federal Aviation Administration has received at least 5,114 reports of unruly passengers and 3,710 reports of passengers refusing to wear a mask. Out of some 973 investigations, 239 resulted in penalties.

“Air rage has unfortunately become all too common. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been insulted or threatened on a flight simply for doing my job,” Teddy Andrews, an American Airlines flight attendant, said during testimony before Congress in September. “On this flight, my colleague on the verge of tears came to the galley after a passenger refused to wear a mask and had been giving her a hard time. He said: ‘N-word,’ I don’t have to listen to a damn thing you say, this is a free country.'”

In addition to the ongoing abuse, flight attendants also fear for increased health risks to passengers — and to themselves.

“I don’t think that most passengers recognize that we’re not just waiters and waitresses in the sky. Our primary role is safety,” Andrews said.

In January, the FAA announced a Zero Tolerance Campaign that warned potential on-flight violators they could face fines and/or jail time.

“The truth of the matter is, every day that I go to work I’m putting my life at risk. I’m putting my family’s life at risk,” Amirzadeh added.

In July, the AFA urged the Department of Justice to make the policy permanent, saying that although incidents have “dropped sharply” since the FAA announced the policy “the rate remains too high.”

The politicization of mask-wearing and passengers consuming too much alcohol have created additional dangers, experts told ABC News.

“Inside our airline,” said Paul Hartshorn, national communications chair for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants at American Airlines, “we’ve never seen so many disruption reports on a daily basis. A lot of them due to mask compliance, but a lot of them due to other reasons.”

“What we see going on now on the aircraft is what’s happening in society,” added Andrews, the flight attendant from American. “This play on masks has become so politicized and so polarized, that people are now acting out on the aircraft. We’ve always asked people to comply — we ask you to wear seatbelts, we ask you to stay seated.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland warned U.S. attorneys across the country to be on alert for unruly passengers on airplanes during the holiday season. After Thanksgiving, the FAA issued more than $161,000 in fines to eight passengers accused of alcohol-related in-flight disturbances.

“As airports continue to push alcohol,” Nelson added, “it’s just getting worse and around the holidays, when we have more and more people traveling and more in the spirit of that celebratory vibe.”

Travel volumes are expected to continue reaching or exceeding pre-pandemic levels through December, according to a recent report by the Transportation Security Administration. Those working on planes said they’re expecting full flights.

“The holiday season will be great but not without challenges as the mask mandates will remain in place,” Andrews said. “As the passenger count increases, so might the incidence of air rage.”

“All we want to do,” Andrews added, “is come to work and do our job.”

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