A recurring frustration in every inflationary period: officials announce that inflation has fallen, and the shopping bill has not. Both things are true, and the confusion is about what the word means.
The distinction
Inflation is the rate at which prices rise. When inflation falls from six percent to two, prices are still rising – just more slowly.
For prices to actually fall you need deflation, which almost never happens outside a severe recession, and which economists work hard to avoid because it is worse than moderate inflation.
So the announcement and the experience are both accurate. Prices rose steeply, then continued rising gently from the new higher level. Nothing came back down.
Why deflation is avoided
Because falling prices change behaviour destructively. If something will cost less next month, purchases get postponed. Postponed purchases mean lower revenue, which means job losses, which means less spending, which pushes prices down further.
Debt makes it worse. Loans are fixed in nominal terms, so if prices and wages fall, the real burden of every existing debt rises.
What actually helps
Wages catching up. If prices rose twenty percent and wages eventually rise twenty percent, the position is restored – not by prices falling but by income meeting them.
That process is slow and uneven. Some sectors catch up quickly, others never fully do, and people on fixed incomes do not catch up at all.
The part that is not just perception
Some price rises do outlast their justification. Costs that rose for a real reason do not always fall back when that reason passes, particularly in concentrated markets where nobody is under pressure to reduce them.
Distinguishing that from ordinary price stickiness requires looking at margins rather than prices, and the answer varies enormously by sector.