On Tuesday, CNN reported that according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday inflation in April was the highest it has been all year.
The article reports:
Wholesale inflation picked up in April to its highest rate in a year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.
The Producer Price Index, which measures the change in prices that manufacturers pay to suppliers, was 2.2% for the 12 months ended in April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.
That gain is higher than what was seen in March, which was downwardly revised from 2.1% to 1.8%.
On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5%, a faster pace than March’s 0.1% loss (also downwardly revised) and ran much hotter than what economists had anticipated. Economists were expecting a monthly gain of 0.3%, according to FactSet consensus estimates.
“The concern here is that we now have a trend, an upward trend in producer prices, which can only be passed through to consumers and result in upward pressure on consumer price inflation over the coming months,” Kurt Rankin, senior economist for the PNC Financial Services Group, told CNN in an interview.
And that means interest rates will stay higher for longer and could further delay the Federal Reserve’s plans for cuts on that front, he said.
…While higher energy costs (up 2% in April) helped to push goods prices higher, services inflation is what drove up the overall PPI last month. Nearly three-quarters of the April monthly gain was attributable to price hikes seen by producers of services, according to the report.
Services providers saw a 0.6% increase in prices for the month, the fastest pace seen for that category since March 2022, Rankin noted.
“Services has been the issue over the past year as consumers continue to spend money, and costs for services-oriented businesses is still stronger than goods inflation; but goods producer prices are now also rising after having fallen through most of 2023,” he said.
This is bad news for consumers and also bad news for the Biden administration that wants to get re-elected in November. The promise of cutting the interest rate before the election to bring consumer costs down will not be kept if inflation continues on its current path.