Home Furnishings Prices Continue Four Year Decline | Television and Cable and Computer and Electronic Services
March 31,
2017 by Jane Chero in General 
This is the third factoid in a series of five factoids detailing the decline of prices among Furniture and Home Furnishings as well as many other major consumer items. The prices of consumer items grew steadily coming out of the recession for virtually all broad product categories until 2012 to 2014, when Durable Goods, including furniture, appliances, and electronics, along with Non Durables, and Commodities began to decline. The Services sector, led by skyrocketing medical costs, is the only broad group continuing to see large price increases. (See Interpreting the CPI in the first factoid of this series.)
In many electronics categories, the price of the durable good has fallen while the cost of operating that product has increased. For example, Television prices have dropped dramatically, but the cost of programming services has skyrocketed. The price of televisions has fallen 65 percentage points since 2010 or about 16 percent a year. During the same time period, Cable and Satellite Television and Radio Services have jumped a total of 17 percentage points – a roughly 4 percent yearly increase.
Similar to Televisions, Personal Computer prices continue to fall – down 41.6 percentage points in six years. Surprising to some, Wireless Telephone Service prices are also down, while Internet Services have stayed steady with a slight increase of 0.5 points from 2010 to 2016.
Source: Consumer Price Index, Bureau of Labor Statistics *2016 data through 3rd quarter