Economics
U.S. Core Inflation Gets Long-Awaited Bump as Phone Drag Fades
- CPI excluding food and energy has biggest annual gain in year
- Gasoline prices fell in March, pulling down headline index
This article is for subscribers only.
A key measure of U.S. inflation finally got a bump in March thanks to a fading drag from mobile-phone service costs, bearing out the Federal Reserve’s forecast for a pickup in price gains.
Excluding food and energy, the core consumer-price index rose 2.1 percent from March 2017, the most in a year and matching the median estimate of economists, after a 1.8 percent gain in February, a Labor Department report showed Wednesday. Including all components, the CPI was down 0.1 percent from February on a drop in gasoline costs; overall prices were up an annual 2.4 percent, also the biggest advance in a year.