Inflation bellwether

Economists expect that a gauge of U.S. consumer prices rose last month from a year earlier.

The Labor Department’s consumer price index, due out today, is projected to show a 1.3% increase for December versus the same month in 2019. That would follow a 1.2% annual increase in November. Inflation has been dormant for most of the past decade, allowing the Federal Reserve to push interest rates to ultra-low levels to provide support for an economy struggling to emerge from a pandemic-related recession.