Inflation came in hotter than expected last month — dimming hopes for another big interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next month.
The Consumer Price Index rose 2.4% versus a year ago in September — above the 2.3% increase economists had expected, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
Month-over-month, the CPI rose 0.2% — steeper than the 0.1% increase economists had expected but even with the 0.2% number from August.
“Core” inflation — a metric closely watched by economists that excludes the volatile costs of food and energy, rose 3.3% versus a year ago, also ahead of economists’ prediction for a 3.2% year-over-year increase.
Stocks were poised to fall on the news in early trading.
While inflation has remained above the Fed’s 2% target on an annual basis, the central bank nonetheless slashed interest rates while shifting attention to the labor market, which had shown signs of weakening prior to the most recent jobs report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics last week released a report which indicated that employers added 254,000 jobs to their payrolls in September — significantly higher than the 150,000 jobs that analysts had predicted.
For the Fed, last week’s much-stronger-than-expected jobs report fueled 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.
The unemployment rate ticked down a notch from 4.2% in August to 4.1% last month, according to the BLS.
The government has also reported that the economy expanded at a solid 3% annual rate in the April-June quarter.
And growth likely continued at roughly that pace in the just-completed July-September quarter.
The stronger-than-expected jobs report prompted analysts to predict that the Fed would institute a more modest 25 basis point cut in November rather than another “jumbo” reduction of 50 basis points.
“We think the bar for the Fed to not cut rates at all in November is high,” Citi economist Veronica Clark wrote in a note to clients on Monday.
“Ultimately, we expect a still subdued inflation backdrop and a reemergence of weaker labor market trends in the next few months will have officials cutting rates by 50bp in December after a smaller 25bp cut in November.”
Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research, agreed, saying that a 50 basis point cut is “off the table” for November.
She told CNBC she anticipated that Thursday’s CPI “should be supportive” of a 25 basis point cut next month.
With Post wires
