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Inflation is persistent.
Everyone is affected by inflation, particularly young couples in the early stages of establishing themselves and beginning to raise a family, as well as the elderly, who often rely on fixed incomes. It would be one thing if inflation were only affecting discretionary purchases. However, one of the areas of the economy that is being most affected by price increases is the cost of food, especially meat products and fresh vegetables.
In the case of fresh fruits and vegetables, the cost increases do not begin at the grocery store. Cost increases go as far back as the cost of the land to grow these items, and land costs are increasing more rapidly than ever as data centers, solar and wind farms, and the land needed to transmit that data and energy are now competing for suitable farm land. Factor in increased across-the-board costs to cultivate and harvest fresh fruits and vegetables, and then all that goes into shipping them by truck, train, and/or container ship. While meat products have different development costs, those input costs are increasing across-the-board for all meat products as well. Add all of these increased input costs together with the grocery store’s increased operational costs, and you have the perfect storm of increased prices for virtually every fresh fruit and vegetable and meat product that would be considered safe and desirable to eat.
While Commercial Roofing and Building Envelope Maintenance project costs are not directly related to food prices, consider that all of the input materials that we currently consume on every job we work on have increased, in addition to across-the-board increases in the wage and hour environment in which we are increasingly competing for fewer laborers. This means that the overall prices that we quote customers are higher than they were 1 year ago, or even 1 month ago. And if that roof needs to go over a grocery store, that grocery store is going to have to raise prices even further to pay the increased cost of their new roof.
So, where is this all going, and when do consumers begin to see some relief in the delta between price increases and income increases? That I don’t know, but what I do know is that nothing related to the construction industry is going to get any less expensive with time. So, if you have a construction-related project that needs attention, waiting is almost guaranteed to cause that project to be more expensive.