U.S. inflation reaches lowest point since February 2021, but price pressures persist
Inflation in the United States dropped last month to its lowest point since it first began surging more than three years ago, adding to a spate of encouraging economic news in the closing weeks of the presidential race.
Consumer prices rose just 2.4 per cent in September from a year earlier, down from 2.5 per cent in August, and the smallest annual rise since February 2021. Measured from month to month, prices increased 0.2 per cent from August to September, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the same as in the previous month.
But excluding volatile food and energy costs, “core” prices, a gauge of underlying inflation, remained elevated in September, driven higher by rising costs for medical care, clothing, auto insurance and airline fares. Core prices in September were up 3.3 per cent from a year earlier and 0.3 per cent from August. Economists closely watch core prices, which typically provide a better hint of future inflation.
Taken as a whole, the September figures show that inflation is steadily easing back to the Federal Reserve System’s 2 per cent target, even if in a gradual and uneven pattern. Apartment rental costs grew more slowly last month, a sign that housing inflation is finally cooling, a long-awaited development that would provide relief to many consumers.
The drop comes a month after the Bank of Canada announced that Canada’s inflation rate had finally fallen to the 2 per cent target. The rate in August marked the slowest pace of growth since February 2021, mostly due to a drop in gasoline prices, although other core measures of inflation also ticked down.
Since the U.S. is such a close trading partner for Canada, the U.S. inflation rate is an important metric to watch.
Gas prices help to hold U.S. inflation down
Overall U.S. inflation last month was held down by a big drop in gas prices, which fell 4.1 per cent from August to September. Grocery prices jumped 0.4 per cent last month, after roughly a year of mild increases, though they’re just 1.3 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Restaurant food prices increased 0.3 per cent last month and are up 3.9 per cent in the past year. And clothing prices rose 1.1 per cent from August to September and are up 1.8 per cent from a year ago.
The improving inflation picture follows a mostly healthy jobs report released last week, which showed that hiring accelerated in September and that the unemployment rate dropped from 4.2 per cent to 4.1 per cent.
Canada’s rate of inflation has slowed to two per cent, marking the first time it has hit the Bank of Canada’s target since 2021. The deceleration is also sparking talk about whether more aggressive interest rate cuts will follow.
Potential election impacts
Cooling inflation, solid hiring and healthy growth could erode former U.S. president Donald Trump’s advantage on the economy in the presidential campaign as measured by public opinion polls. In some surveys, Vice-President Kamala Harris has pulled even with Trump on the issue of who would best handle the economy, after Trump had decisively led President Joe Biden on the issue.
At the same time, most voters still give the economy relatively poor marks, mostly because of the cumulative rise in prices over the past three years.
For the Fed, last week’s much-stronger-than-expected jobs report fuelled some concern that the economy might not be cooling enough to slow inflation sufficiently. The central bank reduced its key rate by an outsized half-point last month, its first rate cut of any size in four years. The Fed’s policymakers also signaled that they envisioned two additional quarter-point rate cuts in November and December.
In remarks this week, a slew of Fed officials have said they’re still willing to keep cutting their key rate but at a deliberate pace, a signal that any further half-point cuts are unlikely.
The Fed “should not rush to reduce” its benchmark rate “but rather should proceed gradually,” Lorie Logan, president of the Federal Reserve’s Dallas branch, said in a speech Wednesday.
Inflation in the United States, Canada and many countries in Europe and Latin America surged in the economic recovery from the pandemic, as COVID closed factories and clogged supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine worsened energy and food shortages, pushing inflation higher. It peaked at 9.1 per cent in the U.S. in June 2022.
Economists at Goldman Sachs projected earlier this week that core U.S. inflation will drop to three per cent by December 2024. And few analysts expect inflation to surge again unless conflicts in the Middle East worsen dramatically.
