The phrase "absorb an increase" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where one entity takes on or accommodates a rise in something, such as costs, demand, or changes in data.
Example: "The company was able to absorb an increase in production costs without passing it on to consumers."
Alternatives: "take on a rise" or "accommodate an increase".
But it might tell only half the story, if firms initially absorb an increase in costs by trimming profit margins; eventually, export prices will rise.
Matt Whittaker, the chief economist at the Resolution Foundation, said most of the increase in consumer debt since 2014 was among middle and higher income groups and they could afford to absorb an increase in interest rates.
For example, firms may absorb an increase in the supply of immigrants and adapt their technology to the local supply of different types of labor.
In the United States, on the other hand, boom conditions in the postwar years produced a still more prosperous and enlarged middle class ready to absorb an increasing supply of books.
In an economic context, fully irrigated wet rice, as recorded (for instance) in colonial Java, had an enormous ability to absorb an increasing labor input and to feed an increasing population.
Prospects are bleak for countries depending mainly upon agricultural production, to absorb an increasing labour force.
Again, in response to a severe economic depression and the high costs of living, in January 1836, the Board of Directors of Lowell's textile mills absorbed an increase in the textile workers' rent to help in the crisis faced by the company boarding house keepers.
To an economist it is astonishing that Americans have been content for so long to allow an economic sector that has absorbed an increasing portion of their incomes — 18 percent of their gross domestic product now and 20 percent before too long — to operate without any meaningful price transparency.
As the United States men's soccer team begins ambitiously looking toward the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, it is beginning to redefine itself in a somewhat striking way, absorbing an increasing number of players who were born and raised in Germany and learned to play the game there with great skill.
They could get a starter like Colorado's Pedro Astacio or David Wells of the White Sox, but they would have to absorb an enormous increase to their payroll.
Still, some people wonder what will happen when the athletes and the spectators go home, and Beijing is left to absorb an enormous increase in hotel rooms, shops and office space, some in unproven neighborhoods.
