I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, May 12th.

Here we are in a morning where the complicated economic recovery from COVID became even a little

more complicated with another

surprising new number. As described by MarketWatch, the consumer price index jumped 8 tenths of a

percent in April, four times more than economists predicted in a Wall Street Journal poll.

That means the April jump pushes the annual inflation rate to 4.2% the highest since 2008.

Now, this comes after April's surprisingly weak jobs report that came out on Friday,

under 300,000 new jobs, fewer by hundreds of thousands than economists had predicted, and with the unusual

duality, therefore, of many job openings, but not that many new hires. So those don't seem to fit.

Fewer new jobs, but rising prices. And then there's the surge in growth rate, somewhere between

6 and 11 percent growth in the economy.

Wow.

But that was expected because things had gotten so slow in the depths of the pandemic, many times close to zero.

Isn't necessarily that big, but it is a big growth rate.

But again, how does it fit in with so many people still

hurting, a looming eviction crisis, and more? But the Federal Reserve, to complicate it even more,

is predicting it will keep interest rates near zero for years. That's the opposite of what they usually do to tame inflation.

Now, one thing we know, the low number of jobs led Republicans to complain that pandemic

unemployment benefits are causing people to not take jobs that are available to them,

forcing President Biden now to say this.

Anyone collecting unemployment who has offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their

unemployment benefits.

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