This year’s sluggish spending on services will probably give way to a resurgence throughout 2021 as the nation gets vaccinated. That means Americans will be more at ease partaking in activities such as trips to Disney World, attending Major League Baseball games and enjoying indoor dining at their favorite restaurant -- developments that may give service providers the wherewithal to raise prices.

Services make up about 60% of the overall consumer price index and 75% of the core measure, which excludes food and energy.

In a Bloomberg Opinion piece last week, former New York Fed President Bill Dudley wrote that a rebound in spending on services suggests “sharp price increases might even be needed to balance demand with the available supply, which the pandemic has undoubtedly diminished.”

The result: Those who see few signs of excess inflation “could be setting themselves up for an unpleasant surprise,” Dudley said.

One issue in the pipeline: so-called base effects will lead to higher inflation. Price indexes early next year will be compared with the sharp retreats experienced in March and April, which may push inflation to, or above, the Fed’s 2% goal.

Gauges of input prices and costs paid by businesses are also perking up as of late, though factories still have plenty of slack in capacity.

Fed officials are seen taking next year’s data in stride. The Fed goal is based on the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures price index, which tends to rise slightly more slowly than CPI on average. Central bankers adopted a new policy framework in August and signaled a willingness to allow PCE inflation to exceed their target for some time.

“In 2019 we had a really perfect storm for higher inflation,” with low unemployment, goods tariffs and a weaker dollar from prior years, said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank AG. “And that really only got us not even back to the Fed’s core inflation objective, so achieving above-target inflation is a really difficult thing for the Fed.”

At 6.7% in November, the jobless rate is almost twice as high as it was in the closing months of 2019, when it stood at a five-decade low of 3.5%. Yet worker compensation costs decelerated then.

Another sector that may see higher inflation is medical care, as providers try to recoup some of the revenue lost during the pandemic, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co.