Consumer prices eased slightly in January, government reports

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday reported that the consumer price index for all items last month had increased by 3.1 percent since January 2023. The rate is slightly slower than what the bureau reported for the previous month. The December index for all items rose 3.4 percent over the past year.

Are these new numbers all good news? On a month-to-month basis, the all-items price index rose 0.3 percent—more than analysts had expected. Also, the index that excludes food and energy prices increased 3.9 percent over the 12-month period that ended in January—the same rate of increase as reported in December. Wall Street economist David Bahnsen says the consumer price index number has skewed higher because the government is relying on rents reflecting outdated prices.

How will this impact decisions about federal interest rates? After the Federal Open Market Committee’s latest meeting two weeks ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the Fed would maintain its current interest rates until it saw evidence that “inflation is moving down sustainably” toward its goal of 2 percent inflation. Bahnsen told WORLD that he believes the Fed will maintain its interest rates at its next committee meeting.

Dig deeper: Listen to Nick Eicher’s conversation with Bahnsen on The World and Everything in It podcast about the state of commercial real estate.