brian chung reports. >> reporter: with three weeks to go, the holiday rush is well underway.erything nearly 8% more expensive than last year, shoppers are paying with plastic to buy gifts this holiday season. >> yeah, i got some things off of amazon. i got a karaoke machine for one of my daughters. and i got my son a bike. >> reporter: with thousands of dollars in debt, the mother of three now faces a serious challenge. >> i think it's kind of an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. >> she's not the only one. jamie feldmann was once $20,000 in debt. >> every time you do a minimum payment, the next month, it's like you didn't pay anything with the interest and the fees. i'm jamie. >> reporter: feldmann posted stories on tiktok, engaging others in similar situations. >> there was some mismanagement of money. >> reporter: americans are heading into the peak holiday shopping season with record debt as they buy things like debt or even christmas trees, but they also face record high interest rates if they miss a payment. >> credit card debt has soared to record $866 billion an

brian chung takes a look back. >> reporter: overall inflation picked up steam over the beginning of 2022the fast pace of price increases since the 1980s. food prices soared. a gallon of milk averaging $4.22. and a dozen eggs $3.59. all more expensive than this time last year. gas prices, topped $5 in the summer before ult itting before $3.50 in the later part of the year. then rent, the biggest spend for most households jumping 7 to 8%. inflation did show signs of backing off in the later parts of the year as the reserve accelerated the pace of the interest rate increases. >> three quarters a percentage point. >> the fed continued to raise rates at a pace not seen in decades. the idea to make borrowing costs expensive to slow the economy. the sharpest slowdowns in the housing market where home buyers are saying note to sky high mortgage rates. more than double what it was a year ago. the tech sec tort faced a fullback as amazon and maine ta laid off thousands of workers. >> i want to say up front that i i take full responsibility for this decision. >> the tech layoffs did not appear to h

brian chung, thank you so much. really appreciate it.y warm out there. >>> united airlines is making a big bet that americans won't be cutting back on air travel that has exploded post covid. this week united placed the biggest order ever for new boeing 787 buying 100 planes with the option to buy another 100. >> larger windows, lighting, bigger overhead bins, everything about the airplane was designed to be the next generation for customers. >> united suspect alone in its optimism. delta's ceo expects $30 billion worth of air travel next year potentially doubling the company's profits. >>> the big extradition fight over the man behind ftx. how and when might prosecutors get to make the case against what they say is one of the biggest fraud cases ever? >>> and a florida pastor and his son charged in what the government says is a multimillion dollar fraud using covid relief money. . the red flags that tipped off the feds, next. >>> plus the massive tornadoes, blizzards and winds putting 8 million americans at risk. you're watching "chris

brian chung has helpful tips all right season for gift giving turning into the time for gift returning. americans will return an estimated $171 billion in merchandise this holiday season. >> we don't know if the person is really going to want what were you giving them >> reporter: julie frankie is holiday returns regular and getting the best value is a priority especially when she plans to return a quarter of her purchases. is returning a sport for you, julie? >> i would say that, yes part of it is definitely a sport where i think i've excelled. and some of it can be stressful. >> reporter: stores flush with inventory and facing rising costs may not want that stuff back an estimated 60% of retailers are changing policies, making returning items harder more and more stores now charging for the service >> it's always great to reach out to customer service, which you can do in store or online or via the phone, just to double, triple check and make sure it's returnable >> reporter: for holiday purchases, many stores offer policies allowing shoppers to return as late as the end of january.

. >> joining us now is brian chung.the big fed decision tomorrow. >> let's rehash numbers. it came in softer than economists expected. they thought inflation was going to be a lot worse. prices came in 7.1% higher than they were this time last year. economists were expecting 7.3%. we're still seeing high inflation and people are feeling that at the store and even though it's no longer 9%, it's still probably not a noticeable impact for american shoppers, but again, directionally, that shows improvement towards what the fed would like to see, which is closer to 2%. now what's keeping inflation high? it's things like rent and things like food, the things people spend the most of their budget on. but we did actually see price declines in some categories this month. when you take a look at for example use cars and truck, computers, furniture and for some reason, men's pants and shorts. seems like some prices coming down. we'll take what we can get. >> thank you very much. i'm sure we'll be talking again. >>> new nbc news re

brian chung, good news, not so good news.what we saw the past 11 months. >> americans have seen prices coming down the last few weeks. i was on long island last week and i saw gas at $2.99. i almost teared up seeing that number. >> you did not. you shed a tear? >> it's been a while. we remember days when it was $5.00. i will take what i can get. overall we've seen prices coming down. there are a number of reasons for that. the question is will prices go up next year. you imagine gas buddy saying we could see prices going up to $4.00 in the spring. people go out and do more road trips. there's a lot of geopolitical things to watch. in china where they're loosening up on the covid restrictions, the reopening of the world's second largest economy could bring a lot of demand which could take prices higher. in russia, the price cap agreed on by a number of g7 countries, russia threatening to not provide any supply at all. if they don't provide supply, maybe that brings prices higher. gasbuddy not predicting it up to the $5.00 that

nbc news business and data reporter brian chung is at the garden state plaza mall in paramus, new jerseyian, some stores have changed drastically their return policies. tell us what we need to know before we go to the mall. >> reporter: yeah. as you mentioned, harry, that batting statistic very much not good. you give someone five gifts, chances are they return one of them, maybe not the right size or they want the cash, but there are plenty of people on this day after christmas making those returns. we asked them about whether or not they noticed anything different in the holiday return policies or the general difficulty in returning those things. take a listen to what the people we chatted with earlier today said about the spirit of returns. >> stores do have different policies and lines even. sometimes you're in the wrong line. >> you have to wait in pretty long lines. >> reporter: was the return pretty seamless? >> it was just crowded everywhere we went, so the lines were a little longer than we expected but took like 15 minutes to exchange. >> reporter: what's interesting is we talk

with us now to take a closer look is business and data reporter brian chung. it's good to see you this morning. what do these numbers tell you? >> great to see you. what it tells me is the jobs market is churning at a high rate. things still look healthy when you mention the 263,000 jobs added in the month of november. that was well above what wall street economists expected. they were 200,000. but the unemployment rate staying steady near the 50-year lows is still good. if you look at the categories we saw the job gains, hospitality, so think bars and restaurants. also manufacturing kicked it up a notch adding 14,000. take a professional and business services they added 6,000. essentially flat over the month. but it's not substantial thuf to make the top line number fall down. 3.7% unemployment, that's a very healthy labor market. >> where was the weakest part of the employment increase? >> one concern when it comes to this overall market is not necessarily what we saw in this particular report. it's whether or not the picture will change in the future. you h

. >> reporter: and brian chung is joining us. let's dig into the numbers. prices going up, but not as quickly as before. where do they rise the most? >> in the things that are the biggest expenditures when you think about food and rent. so those are the things that remain expensive. but on a top line number, prices are 7.1% more expensive today than they were this time last year. but that is a slower pace of inflation than we had seen earlier in the year when you recall in the summer inflation is pacing about 9%. so economists say we want to be closer to 2%. so 7.1% still a long way to go. >> and we like to hear that. and we know that the fed is meeting today expected to raise interest rates tomorrow. seventh time this year. how does today's report affect any of the decision making around that? >> yeah, the federal reserve two day meeting so they began today looking at the cpi numbers. and likely won't change what the expect tags was prior to this morning anyway which is that the fed would pare back the size of the interest rates. so instead of 0.75, they c

. >> nbc news brian chung joins us now. he is crunching the numbering for us. prices going up. what areas saw the biggest increases, the biggest sales? >> 7.6%, that's a pretty noticeable increase, but when you consider that things across the board got 7.1% more expensive over the last year, it's essentially a wash. we did see some categories where there was unusually large amount of spending and restaurants were the big winner. up 15% year over year. i talked to a lot of people at the mall yesterday, they were saying we're trying to get the holiday spirit. we're walking around, not with the intention of buying, but maybe hit the ruby tuesday's, the california pizza kitchen, go out and dine. i think the experience was a bigger story for shoppers. >> so where did people spend less? >> there were some categories where they dramatically pulled back on shopping. electronics and jewelry are two of those. maybe no big tvs or bracelets or necklaces under the tree this season. those could be categories where we might see price slashes and discounting because if people

shoppers would spend less because of inflation, there are signs in some areas that spending is up brian chungspending is up and how retailers seem to be feeling this week. >> if you are a regular retailer, you're probably feeling about how people are spending, but -- >> is that a technical term? >> 7.6%, that's fine but if 7.1% is the increase, that's essentially a wash, but there are some bright spots. when you take a look at restaurant spending, up 15%. so if you are someone that owns a restaurant, that's a good thing and this lines up, you know i was at the mall yesterday. a lot of people were out shopping, but the longest line i saw in the mall yesterday was at starbucks. at california pizza kitchen. tgi fridays. people wants to go walk around the mall, soak up the atmosphere and eat at the food court. that explains why the numbers we're seeing shows the boost in spending at restaurants and a more muted boost in retail broadly. >> brian, thank you very much. appreciate that breakdown. speaking of money and speaking of your money, would you like to get $565 million more of it? well, you ha

joining us now is brian chung.fed chairman say about how much of an impact this will have on americans? >> gep, all this is about inflation. the ideas is to make costs more expensive to make the economy move more slowly and take inflation down. we are seeing signs of inflation going directionally down when you consider the last reading was 7.1% that's a step down from what we saw earlier in the year, but still above where the reserve would like to see it. the question is what's the cost going to be as those cost gos up? could that lead to pain. here's what he said in response to a question i had about that yesterday afternoon. >> what we're doing now is it's raising interest rates for people. so people are paying higher rates on mortgages and that kind of thing. there will be some softening in labor market conditions. and i wish there were a completely painless way to restore price stability. there isn't. this is the best we can do. i do think that markets are pretty confident it seems to me that we will get inflat

i have business reporter brian chung with me. we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. but in terms of a possible recession, what do these numbers tell us? 263,000 jobs is just a number. let's contextualize it. that 263,000 was a little bit lower than 284,000 we saw oded in october. but consider that wall street economists were only expecting this number to come in around 200,000. so a big beat here. and the unemployment rate was 3.7%. that was the same as we saw last month. so that uptick in unemployment. when we look at the jobs sectors that added these jobs, 88,000 in leisure and hospitality. that's bars and rrlts. also health care added 45,000 jobs. a lot of burn out among nurses. but you want to highlight professional and business services adding about 6,000 jobs in the month. that's not a lot. it's essentially flat. this is where you may have seen some of the tech layoffs. there were a lot of tech layoffs. but it seems like not having too much of an effect on the overall picture. and one last thing to highlight. average hourly earnings, wage growth in november, pe

with us now to take a closer look at this is white house sport mike memoli, business reporter brian chung and robin farzad host of business and culture program "full disclosure." what are we expecting to hear from the president this morning? >> you can see that the markets really like today's cpi number. white house officials are also very happy with what they see. you know that president biden said taming inflation is one of his top priorities. and this news today is certainly welcome in that direction. the president going to be touting the fact that the burden on american consumers is still at a heightened level, but it's easing. it's a sign that he will argue his economic plan is working. we remember that during the summer months when we thought inflation was going to be one of the major issues in this midterm election that hurt democrat can, obviously the election turned out differently, but the white house was slow to react to some of these more negative reports as they were coming out, explaining them away with a myriad of factors. put we're going to hear the president talk about wa

joining me now is brian chung.ven that inflation is cooling, spending power is high, any reason to believe this administration might be able to achieve a soft landing without dipping into a recession? >> you might have to ask me that a year if now because it's going to take a while to bear out because inflation is still at 7.1% and yes, that's encouraging, but it's still very far away from where economists would like to see it. they see a healthy level of inflation at about 2%. they've been raising rates by .75 points in the last four meetings. that they'll go to about a half a percentage point at their meeting tomorrow. that could set up the fed to do a quarter point increase the beginning of next year and maybe stop entirery as they watch to see the bite of these increases which operate on a lag, impact the economy through 2023. >> so keep your hat on. if you're thinking about buying a house. mortgage rates could come down in a little while. thank you very much. joining me now is business insider columnist, lynne

nbc's business and data reporter brian chung joins us now.n talking about inflation and a possible recession. when you consider the possibility of a recession what are you sort of looking for as those first indicators in 2023? >> for what it is worth right now this economy looks very weird. it has been very interesting to cover over 2022. but on the inflation side of things, not good. prices went up for everything across the board. on the labor market side of things, it is quite good that americans still have jobs. unemployment is near 50-year lows. we saw jobless claims tick up to 225,000 for the week ending december 24. that's only just a smidge above the prepandemic trend we saw around 218,000 per week. so really that picture isn't changing quite yet. but it is indeed something we're concerned about as this economy maybe slows and people start to lose their jobs in 2023. >> let's talk about gas, up, down, where is it going to be in 2023? >> a roller coaster ride this year. remember when prices were $5 earlier this year and they have back d

high term of al brian chung nbc news, um, you warned americans of pain earlier this year as the fed hikes rates. but with the fed now expected to raise rates higher than you thought, when you first said that just wondering where we are in that pain. how would you describe that to americans if the projections on unemployment find themselves that would be 1.6 million americans out of jobs. so the largest amount of pain the worst pain would come from a failure to raise rates high enough and from us allowing inflation to become entrenched in the economy so that the ultimate cost of getting it out of the economy would be very high in terms of, uh, unemployment, meaning very high unemployment for extended periods of time, that kind of thing that had to happen. when inflation really got out of control, and the fed didn't respond aggressively enough for soon enough in a prior episode, you know, 50 years ago. so that's really the worst pain would be if we failed to act. what we're doing now is, you know it's raising interest rates for people, and so people are paying higher rates on mortgages and