FiveThirtyEight has a simple rundown of the inflation and interest rate numbers from 2022:

One of the most important numbers of 2022 was 9.1 percent. That was the inflation rate in June — the highest yearly increase since 1981…

Inflation has since cooled a bit, but as of November, consumer prices were still 7.1 percent higher than they were at the same time last year. And that’s affected the way families are celebrating the holidays. In a poll from before Christmas, 57 percent of those surveyed said that it was harder to afford the gifts they wanted to buy, up from 40 percent the year before. And 11 percent of respondents in another poll said they anticipated taking on some amount of debt for their holiday shopping…

To control this high inflation, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate more than 4 percentage points over the course of the year, to the highest point in 15 years. Most observers agree that’s likely to cause a recession. What’s less clear is how bad it will be, and whether it curbs inflation as it’s intended to do. These are the unknown questions 2023 is poised to answer, and why the inflation rate is one of the most important numbers of the past year.

FiveThirtyEight

I found myself dipping into what are supposed to be emergency funds to cover my family’s normal living expenses toward the end of 2022, so yes I can understand that people who were barely making ends meet at the beginning of the year might be in trouble at the end of it. The good news is that almost anyone who wants a job should be able to find one, at least for now, and maybe not at the level of pay they prefer. The real pain comes if unemployment spikes while inflation is still high. The hope for 2023 would be that inflation continues to tick down toward a “normal” level of say 2-3%, while unemployment stays in its low range of say 3-5%. If that is where we are a year from now, our economy and society will feel more stable although of course we will still have serious inequality and social problems to work on.

And by the way, does “growth” really matter if people are employed and are able to buy the things they need and a reasonable amount of the things they want? I don’t see why, it seems like a very indirect measure.