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Temperatures may be soaring, but inflation is officially cooling. The consumer price index (CPI) increased 3% in the 12 months through June, marking its smallest YoY increase since March 2021.
That’s a significant drop from its 9.1% peak last summer, the highest in 40 years, and indicated the fastest price increases consumers have seen since the Reagan administration. Now, the Federal Reserve has some long-awaited breathing room, and there’s a chance it’ll pause future interest rate hikes.
The report showed other positive signs: Month over month, the CPI rose 0.2% in June, which was lower than expected. And core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, also climbed less than forecast.
“After a punishing stretch of high inflation that eroded consumer’s purchasing power, the fever is breaking,” Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, told the Wall Street Journal.
President Biden, for his part, also cheered on the report; a strengthened economic landscape is sure to become a reelection talking point. “Our progress creating jobs while lowering costs for families is no accident, and I will continue to fight for lower costs for families every day,” Biden said in a statement.
But we’re not fully in the clear—and we all know we’ve been faked out before. (Cough*summer 2021*cough.)
“There’s still three areas of the inflation that the Fed’s looking at very closely—service inflation, wage inflation and housing inflation. All three of those things, while they are moderating, are still uncomfortably high,” Verdence Capital Advisors chief investment officer Megan Horneman told CNBC.
Per June’s report, housing in particular looks like it’ll continue to be a stubborn part of the inflation picture. The shelter index rose 0.4 percent from May, which accounted for around 70 percent of the increase in headline CPI, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.