US inflation nears 6-year high, eroding wages

0.2% rise in consumer price index from previous month partly reflects gains in fuel prices

US inflation accelerated in May to the fastest pace in more than six years, reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s outlook for gradual interestrate hikes while eroding wage gains that remain relatively tepid despite an 18-year low in unemployment.

The consumer price index rose 0.2 per cent from the previous month and 2.8 per cent from a year earlier, matching estimates, a Labour Department report showed Tuesday.

The annual gain was the biggest since February 2012 and follows a 2.5 per cent increase in April. Excluding food and energy, the core gauge was up 0.2 per cent from the prior month and 2.2 per cent from May 2017, also matching the median estimates of economists.

The pick-up in headline inflation partly reflects gains in fuel prices, though the annual gain in the core measure — seen by officials as a better gauge of underlying inflation trends — was the most since February 2017.

While the Fed is widely projected to raise borrowing costs this week for the sixth time in 18 months, the path of inflation will figure into policy makers’ thinking on the pace of increases for the second half and in 2019.

The data “provide further evidence that inflation is moving towards the Fed’s objective,” and the central bank will continue on its gradual rate-hike path, said Kevin Cummins, an economist at NatWest Markets. The pay figures are “a reminder that you don’t need to necessarily get more aggressive in your approach because wages haven’t accelerated as much as they have in the past,” he said.

The Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation — a separate consumption-based figure from the Commerce Department — came in at the central bank’s 2 per cent goal during March and April, and the figure tends to run slightly below the Labour Department’s CPI.

At the same time, several Fed officials have indicated that a modest overshoot of the inflation goal wouldn’t necessarily warrant faster interest-rate hikes, after years of below-target price gains.

Commerce Department figures released May 31 showed the Fed’s preferred gauge of core prices was up 1.8 per cent in April from a year earlier.

A separate Labour Department report yesterday illustrated how higher prices are pinching wallets: average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, were unchanged in May from a year earlier, even as nominal pay accelerated to a 2.7 per cent annual gain from 2.6 per cent in April. For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 per cent from a year earlier.

Seasonally adjusted gasoline prices rose 1.7 per cent in May from the previous month, after a 3 per cent gain in April.

The shelter category, which accounts for about one-third of the CPI, rose 0.3 per cent from the previous month, continuing a trend of steady increases.

Owners-equivalent rent, one of the categories designed to track rental prices, advanced 0.2 per cent.