WASHINGTON – The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) last month rose 0.9 percent to 205.352 points (1982 to 1984 = 100), 2.8 percent above its year-ago level, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
After seasonal adjustment, the CPI-U rose 0.6 percent, accelerating from February’s 0.4-percent pace and January’s 0.2 percent.
The rise was led by energy costs, which increased 5.9 percent in March, as the index for petroleum-based energy surged 10.1 percent (with gasoline rising 11 percent and fuel oil 3.8 percent) while the index for natural gas and electricity rose 1.3 percent.
But the closely-watched core rate excluding food and energy edged up 0.1 percent in March – slowing from February’s 0.2-percent rise – to 2.5 percent above its year-ago level. It fell short of the 0.6-percent median forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of 73 economists.
“This buys the Fed some time so they can sit tight for a little while longer,” Lindsey Piegza, a market analyst at FTN Financial in New York, told Bloomberg. “We’re going to have to get a few more months of declining core inflation before the Fed can start to cut interest rates.”
Meanwhile, American workers’ real average weekly earnings last month fell 0.1 percent from their February level, to 1.6 percent above their level in March 2006, the BLS said in a separate report.
Last month’s 0.3-percent increases in average weekly hours and average hourly earnings were more than offset by a 0.8-percent rise in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), the BLS said.
Before adjustment for seasonal changes and inflation, U.S. nonsupervisory workers’ weekly earnings averaged $580.31 in March, compared with $574.81 in February and $556.42 in March 2006.
Additional information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 20-page CPI report is available at www.bls.gov/cpi; information on the five-page Real Earnings Report is available at www.bls.gov/ces.
