Source: Nworeport

Americans are already tired of the increasing inflation, but the problem is worse than official statistics report due to a harmful phenomenon called “skimpflation.”

Stemmed from a recent episode of NPR’s Planet Money podcast, skimpflation refers to a drop in the quality of services as businesses struggle to deal with a labor shortage and growing material costs.

While it is related to “shrinkflation”, which refers to stealthy reductions in package sizes, the service cutbacks of skimpflation are an even larger headache for consumers, causing longer waits, fewer options, and a general increase in daily inconveniences.

With US inflation at a 30-year high of 5.4 percent, skimpflation is piling on the woes for consumers who are already suffering.

In a good example, Disneyland and Disney World have still not reestablished parking lot tram service six months after the theme parks reopened, infuriating visitors who have had to walk almost a

mile from their cars to enter and exit the parks.

“The Trams are needed, many people can’t do all the walking. I personally can’t because of my bad back. Please get these going it will be so much better for many people,” one enraged visitor complained on Facebook.

Other difficulties have grown across the economy at a fast pace. Nationwide delivery times for Domino’s pizza have steadily grown since mid-July, according to Bloomberg.

Hotels are hitting back on services such as daily room cleaning and free breakfast buffets to the

concern of guests waking up to find a little dish of packaged food first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile, phone wait times for customer service are growing across many industries.

Understaffed bars and restaurants have also seen customer satisfaction suffer, with criticisms about service, food, and cleanliness rising. Airlines, in particular, have provoked travelers with large, seemingly random currents of flight

cancellations, which the industry has only reluctantly confessed are caused by staffing shortages.

Last weekend, American Airlines became the latest affected by the chaos, canceling some 1,000 flights in one single day.

Overall, customer satisfaction has dropped in nine out of the past 10 quarters and are at their

lowest levels in 15 years, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

“Slumpflation is a new term, but it’s an old way that companies have had to react in the face of inflationary pressures,” economist Jeffrey Haymond with Cedarville University told WKEF-TV.

“It’s new to most of us now, because we haven’t had the big inflation that we had in the ’70s and we had a brief period in the mid-2000s. But even then, that wasn’t as long-lasting as what we are seeing today,” he noted.

“That seems to be, it seems to be more baked into the whole market now. And we’re starting to see it manifest more like the ’70s experience,” Haymond said.