One thing anxious Americans don’t have to worry about with the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down large chunks of the economy is inflation. Consumer prices sank 0.8% in April, led by tumbling gasoline prices, to mark the biggest decline since the Great Recession.

The decline in the consumer price index last month was the steepest since 2008. Economists polled by MarketWatch had also forecast an 0.8% drop.

Prices at the pump led the decline, the government said Tuesday. Stay-at-home orders kept Americans off the roads and curbed the need to fuel up. Yet prices also fell by record amounts for a variety of other goods and services as businesses cut prices in the face of waning demand.

The pace of inflation over the past 12 months slowed to 0.3% from 1.5% in March and 2.5% at the start of 2020, showing the crisis is putting severe downward pressure on prices despite an emergency infusion of $3 trillion in federal aid to support the economy.

Source: Marketwatch