U.S. data, January 2019 – June 2026. Three relief bills pushed money into the economy in 2020–21; inflation followed in 2021–22. All four charts share the same time axis, so the vertical marker lines (the three signing dates) line up down the page.
Part 2 → The price level: have prices come down? Everyday items in actual dollars, through June 2026
12-month change in the Consumer Price Index — the inflation rate quoted in the news. "Core" strips out food and energy. The gap in late 2025: the October 2025 CPI was never published because of the government shutdown.
All government benefit payments to people — stimulus checks, unemployment top-ups, Child Tax Credit, Social Security and the rest — in billions per month. The three stimulus spikes are unmistakable. (PPP loans and state aid are not in this line; they show up in the deficit chart below.)
Money households received above the steady 2019 pace, summed over each bill's main disbursement window. Rough attribution: programs overlap at the edges, and the surge in regular state unemployment checks is included in the window it fell in.
Each month's federal budget deficit, plotted as money added: spending out minus taxes in. This catches everything — checks, unemployment, PPP, aid to states. Blue months, Washington added money; red months (tax season), it pulled more in than it paid out.
Total income of all U.S. households, adjusted for inflation, at an annual rate. The gray line strips out every government transfer — it's what households earned from the private economy on its own. The vertical gap between the lines is the government money, so the spikes show each round of checks — and the 2022 sag shows the windfall being given back as the checks ended and prices rose.
The 2020 money went out while prices were flat. The CARES Act was the biggest of the three bills, and the April–June 2020 deficits were the largest ever recorded — but the economy was locked down, people stayed home and saved, and inflation actually fell, touching 0.1% in May 2020.
The 2021 money went out while the economy was reopening. The $600 checks landed in January 2021; the ARP's $1,400 checks landed eight weeks later — March 2021 was the single biggest benefits month on record — with vaccines rolling out and businesses reopening. Inflation crossed 4% that April, 7% by December, and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.
The household bottom line (chart 4). Real personal income hit an all-time record in March 2021 — in the middle of the weakest labor market in decades — entirely because of government checks: income from the private economy alone was still below its pre-COVID level. By mid-2022 the checks were gone, prices were up 9%, and households had given the entire windfall back.
What these charts can and can't say. The charts show timing, not proof of cause. Supply-chain snarls and the 2022 energy shock were real, and economists still argue about the split — one widely cited San Francisco Fed estimate puts the fiscal-stimulus share of the surge at roughly 3 percentage points. What the data does rule out is the idea that the money and the inflation were unrelated in time: the inflation surge began within weeks of the third and largest round of checks.
| CARES Act | Dec 2020 relief | American Rescue Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signed | Mar 27, 2020 (Trump) | Dec 27, 2020 (Trump) | Mar 11, 2021 (Biden) |
| Headline size | ≈ $2.2 trillion | ≈ $0.9 trillion | ≈ $1.9 trillion |
| Checks to individuals | $1,200 + $500/child — ~$271B paid | $600 — ~$142B paid | $1,400 — ~$402B paid |
| Extra unemployment | +$600/wk through Jul 2020 | +$300/wk into Mar 2021 | +$300/wk through Sep 2021 |
| Other big pieces | $349B PPP · $150B states · $500B Treasury/Fed backstop | $284B PPP round 2 · $82B schools | $350B state & local · monthly Child Tax Credit · ~$130B schools |
| Households got* | (Apr–Dec 2020) | (Jan–Feb 2021) | (Mar–Dec 2021) |
| Backdrop | Lockdowns; inflation falling toward 0% | Vaccines starting; inflation 1.4% | Reopening; inflation about to cross 4% |
* Benefit payments above the 2019 pace during each bill's main window (chart 2). Sizes are enacted-cost estimates (CBO/JCT); check totals are IRS/Treasury disbursement figures.
Sources. Inflation: Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, 12-month change, not seasonally adjusted (FRED series CPIAUCNS; core CPILFENS). Household benefits: Bureau of Economic Analysis, government social benefits to persons, seasonally-adjusted annual rate ÷ 12 (FRED A063RC1). Deficit: U.S. Treasury Monthly Statement (FRED MTSDS133FMS), sign flipped so deficits plot as money added. Real income: BEA, real personal income (FRED RPI) and real personal income excluding current transfer receipts (FRED W875RX1), chained dollars. Money supply: FRED M2SL. Retrieved August 3, 2026.
Bill sizes are CBO/JCT enacted-cost estimates; check totals are IRS/Treasury disbursement reports. "Households got" rows are computed from the benefits series as described above.
Published by Rational Ground. Hover any chart for exact monthly values; "View data" shows the full tables.