Disinflation Is Happening in All the Right Places
The US consumer price index is still a fog of lags, imputations and general noise, but the categories that matter are extremely encouraging.
How far will your money go?
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There’s still a lot of noise in the latest US inflation report, but the things that matter are moving in the right direction.
The core consumer price index — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — rose just 0.2% in May from the previous month, the softest month-on-month inflation since August 2021 and less than the 0.3% projected by the median economist in a Bloomberg survey (unrounded, the May number came to 0.1631%). The so-called supercore services index — which excludes the lagged shelter category — saw prices fall slightly from the previous month, the first time that’s occurred in nearly three years.