The cruel math of unemployment is not about too few working. It's about too many. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Good morning to you. First, we'll get a key measure of inflation this morning, the one preferred by the guardians of interest rates at the Federal Reserve. This is the one with the clumsy name, the personal consumption expenditures price index.

It'll be for December, and it's out in about an hour and a half. President Trump talked about

prices yesterday in Georgia. Marketplaces Nancy Marshall Ginsburg has more.

President Trump pointed to lower prices for things like gas to make this claim yesterday.

What word have you not heard over the last two weeks?

Affordability.

Because I've won.

I've won affordability.

The cost of used cars is also down.

President Trump is expected to continue talking about lower prices and affordability

in his State of the Union speech this Tuesday.

But inflation is still above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, and consumers feel the pinch,

especially at the grocery store. A left-leaning think tank, the Center for American Progress,

has unveiled a plan for price caps. It was written by former Biden administration economist

Jared Bernstein. The proposal

would freeze the price of more than 20 different foods for at least two years, including

staples like meat, milk, cheese, and butter. The cap program would be voluntary. The plan would

offer breaks on credit card swipe fees as an incentive for stores to participate.

I'm Nancy Marshall Genser for Marketplace. Question. Is unemployment able to work but unable to find work a liability or an asset? It's not an asset to the worker in search of livelihood, of course, but mainstream economics acknowledges that some joblessness

helps to keep prices down and from the corporate point of view, it helps to keep profits up.

It's one of the reasons that to most economists, ideal unemployment is not zero unemployment.

This is one of the critiques of the economic system we live in.

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