WASHINGTON – The seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased a greater-than-anticipated 0.3 percent last month, as food and energy costs rose, according to a report today from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The index had fallen 0.1 percent in August.
Analysts had expected the CPI to rise 0.2 percent, according to the median estimate from a Bloomberg News survey of 82 economists. (Their estimates ranged from no change to a 0.5-percent gain.)
The core CPI excluding food and energy rose 0.2 percent in September – the same as in June, July and August – matching the survey’s prediction. Food prices rose 0.5 percent. The energy index rose 0.3 percent, ending its three-month decline, as gasoline prices increased 0.4 percent while fuel oil costs rose 1.0 percent and natural gas and electricity rose 0.1 percent.
The report “should further ease inflation concerns and allow the Fed to focus on risks to growth,” when policymakers meet the week after next, Zach Pandl, an economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in New York, told Bloomberg News. “To the Fed, the current level of core CPI inflation is only moderately high, and it will not significantly constrain their policy options.”
Compared with September 2006, the CPI rose 2.8 percent to 208.490 points (1982-1984 = 100). Energy prices rose 5.3 percent and food prices rose 4.5 percent, while the core CPI rose 2.1 percent from its year-ago level.
In the Northeast, the BLS said in a separate report this afternoon, the CPI-U was 221.436 points (1977 = 100), an increase of 2.4 percent from its level in September 2006. The regional energy index rose 3.3 percent year-over-year, as increases in gasoline prices (4.1 percent) and electricity costs (3.9 percent) outweighed a 2.7-percent decline in natural gas service. The food index rose 4.2 percent.
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Meanwhile, American workers’ real average weekly earnings (adjusted for inflation) rose 0.1 percent in September compared with the month before, after rising 0.5 percent in August, the BLS said in a separate report. A 0.4-percent increase in average hourly earnings was partially offset by a 0.3-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Average weekly hours were unchanged, for the second consecutive month.
Compared with September 2006, real earnings increased 4.1 percent. Before adjustment for seasonal changes and inflation, weekly earnings averaged $602.95 last month, compared with $573.25 a year earlier.
Additional information, including the 20-page Consumer Price Index report, is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics at www.bls.gov/cpi; the five-page Real Earnings report can be found at www.bls.gov/ces.
