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Here's where inflation stands today — and why it's raising hope about the economy

Scott Horsley

The latest inflation report is reinforcing hopes about a soft landing in the economy — or when inflation eases without sparking a downturn. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

The latest inflation report is reinforcing hopes about a soft landing in the economy — or when inflation eases without sparking a downturn.

Inflation got a little higher last month — but not enough to set off alarms.

Consumer prices in July were up 3.2% from a year ago, according to data released Thursday, driven in part by rising rent, gas and grocery prices. The increase came after the annual inflation rate had fallen steadily for the previous 12 months.

Could the U.S. still see a recession? We got big clues this week on where it's headed

Despite the rise in the headline rate, details in the report show inflation continuing to moderate. Stocks rallied on the news, which bolstered hopes for a "soft landing," in which the Federal Reserve brings inflation under control without tipping the economy into recession.

Here are four things to know about the latest report on inflation.

What was so encouraging about the latest inflation report?

Although consumer prices rose more in July on an annual basis than they did in June, that shouldn't be read as inflation gaining steam. Rather, it's the result of a single month of flat prices a year ago dropping out of the calculation.

Focusing on more recent months shows price hikes continuing to moderate. In fact, over the last three months, prices have climbed at an annual rate of just under 2%. And some prices are actually coming down.

So what is up — and what is down in price?

Goods overall are getting cheaper, with some exceptions like gasoline and groceries.

Used car prices were down last month, and they are expected to keep falling. Air fares dropped more than 8% in July for the second month in a row.

Rent is still going up, but not as fast as it had been. The economy is also seeing a moderation in the price of services – things like getting your car fixed or going to the dentist.

Service prices are largely driven by wages, so they tend to be stickier than other prices. The big question is whether service inflation will come down enough to bring overall inflation under control.

Why is Wall Street so encouraged about inflation?

The inflation data was within what Wall Street had forecast, and it reinforces hope that inflation is easing.

At the same time, other recent data is showing a sturdier economy than many had expected. The labor market, in particular, is holding up well despite the Fed's aggressive increases in interest rates since last year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 400 points in the first hour of trading Thursday, although most of those gains were later reversed. The Dow closed up 52 points, or 0.15%.

Stephen Juneau, a senior economist at Bank of America, says he's encouraged about the trajectory of inflation.

"I think the direction of travel right now is really moving in the right direction, and is encouraging on the inflation front," Juneau said.

How could the inflation data impact the Fed's thinking?

Even before Thursday's inflation news, markets were betting the Fed would leave interest rates unchanged at its next meeting after raising rates aggressively since last year.

Oddsmakers see that as even more likely after this report.

But nothing's certain and additional economic data will determine the Fed's next action. The Fed doesn't meet until late September and there are still areas of concern, including higher oil prices which are driving up prices at the gas pump.

How could inflation impact households?

Although inflation is easing, it's still pretty high. Even if the Fed doesn't raise rates higher, they're likely to remain elevated for an extended period.

That has an impact on many people's pocketbooks since households are paying more for mortgages and credit cards, for example.

And the economy may be looking sturdier, but there's still a risk the U.S. could enter a recession.

China's economy, for example, is showing signs of slowing down significantly, which could impact the global economy at a time when the U.S. is taking a tougher stance against the Asian country.

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Are US Interest Rates High Enough to Beat Inflation? the Fed Will Take Its Time to Find Out

The sharp interest rate hikes of the past two years will likely take longer than previously expected to bring down inflation, several Federal Reserve officials have said in recent comments, suggesting there may be few, if any, rate cuts this year

Susan Walsh

FILE - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference at the Federal Reserve in Washington, May 1, 2024. The sharp interest rate hikes of the past two years will likely take longer than previously expected to bring down inflation, several Federal Reserve officials have said in recent comments, suggesting there may be few, if any, rate cuts this year. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The sharp interest rate hikes of the past two years will likely take longer than previously expected to bring down inflation, several Federal Reserve officials have said in recent comments, suggesting there may be few, if any , rate cuts this year.

A major concern expressed by both Fed policymakers and some economists is that higher borrowing costs aren't having as much of an impact as economics textbooks would suggest. Americans as a whole, for example, aren't spending much more of their incomes on interest payments than they were a few years ago, according to government data, despite the Fed's sharp rate increases. That means higher rates may not be doing much to limit many Americans' spending, or cool inflation.

“What you have right now is a situation where these high rates aren’t generating more braking power on the economy,” said Joseph Lupton, global economist at J.P. Morgan. “That would suggest that they either need to stay high for longer or maybe even higher for longer, meaning rate hikes might come into the conversation.”

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference earlier this month that an interest rate increase was “unlikely,” but he did not fully rule it out. Powell emphasized, however, that the Fed needed to take more time to gain “greater confidence” that inflation is actually returning to the Fed's 2% target.

“I think the Fed’s telling you hikes are not quite as on the table as the market was expecting,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, an economist at TD Securities.

On Friday, Dallas Federal Reserve President Lorie Logan said that it is “just too early to think" about cutting rates, according to news reports. She also suggested that it is unclear whether the Fed's rate is high enough to quell inflation. Logan is one of the 19 officials on the Fed's interest-rate setting committee, though she does not vote on rates this year.

Higher-for-longer borrowing costs are sure to disappoint many, from Americans hoping for lower mortgage rates before buying a home, to Wall Street traders eagerly awaiting a cut, to President Joe Biden, whose reelection campaign would likely benefit from lower rates.

On Wednesday, the government will release April's inflation report, and economists forecast it will show inflation declined slightly to 3.4%, from 3.5% in March. It has climbed from 3.1% in January , however, after falling sharply last year, raising concerns about whether progress in reducing inflation has stalled.

The Fed has pushed its key rate to a 23-year high of 5.3% in an effort to bring down inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.

Yet despite those sharp increases, Americans, on average, spent just 9.8% of their after-tax income paying interest and principal on their debts in last year’s fourth quarter. Two years earlier — before the Fed hiked rates — they spent 9.5%, a historically low percentage.

Why hasn't the figure risen by more? Millions of American homeowners refinanced their mortgages at very low rates during the past decade and a half when the Fed mostly kept its key rate at nearly zero to bolster the economy. As a result, their mortgages remain low and their finances largely unaffected by the Fed's policies. Consumers who paid off their cars, or who took out low-rate five-year car loans before rates rose, have also felt little impact.

The average rate for a new 30-year mortgage is nearly 7.1% , according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. But Goldberg calculates that the average rate on all outstanding mortgages is just 3.8%, not much higher than 3.3% when the Fed began to hike rates. The gap between new rates and the average outstanding is the highest since the 1980s.

"One of the things we hear is that maybe because so many Americans refinanced their mortgages when mortgage rates dropped during the pandemic ... people are not feeling the bite of higher mortgage rates yet,” Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve's Minneapolis branch, said last week. “If that’s true, and I think there’s some truth to that, then it may take longer” for the Fed’s rate hikes “to be fully felt by the housing market and by the economy more broadly.”

Many large corporations also locked in low rates before the Fed began hiking, further limiting the impact of higher borrowing costs.

“I think the most likely scenario is where we are right now, which is just we stay put for an extended period of time,” Kashkari said, referring to the Fed's key rate.

There are signs that higher rates are causing more financial struggles for many Americans, as delinquencies on credit cards and auto loans rise. And many younger Americans are becoming increasingly concerned that, with mortgage costs so high, they will not be able to afford a home.

Yet delinquencies are climbing from very low levels and are not yet historically high. Pandemic-era stimulus checks and rising incomes allowed many people to pay down debt in the past few years.

And Americans, in total, are carrying much less debt as a percentage of their incomes than they did during the housing bubble 15 years ago, Lupton notes.

“With consumers and businesses alike sheltered from higher interest rates thanks to pandemic-era debt paydowns and refinancing, their aggregate interest burden is not yet historically elevated," Tom Barkin, president of the Richmond Federal Reserve, said in recent comments. “To me, that suggests the full impact of higher rates is yet to come.”

Goldberg said that greater borrowing costs will eventually start to bite as more Americans throw in the towel and purchase homes, even with higher mortgage rates. In some cases, they may move for a new job or have family changes that require a move. And more companies, over time, will have to borrow at higher rates as well, as their low-interest loans mature.

“The longer we stay here, the more people can’t wait," Goldberg said. “If the Fed can wait out consumers, that would be one way that higher for longer actually translates to Main Street.”

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Watch CBS News

Here's what the latest inflation report means for your money

By Aimee Picchi

July 12, 2023 / 2:20 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Inflation is rapidly cooling from its hottest pace in 40 years, providing some relief to Americans whose wallets have been strained by price increases in everything from groceries to housing. 

The Consumer Price Index grew at an annual rate of 3%  in June — the smallest increase since March 2021, the Labor Department  said  on Wednesday. 

While that's good news for consumers as they grapple with their daily expenses, the latest inflation figures are more than a reflection of the price pressures facing U.S. households. The data also influences key financial decisions by policymakers that may impact millions of consumers' budgets later this year, ranging from home buyers to senior citizens.

The Federal Reserve looks at the CPI data when deciding whether to increase interest rates ; it also considers a different inflation metric known as the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index , which tends to run lower than CPI. Although both indexes show inflation is cooling, it still remains higher than the Fed's target rate of 2% — especially so-called "core" inflation, which strips out volatile fuel and food prices. Core inflation rose 4.8% last month, more than double the Fed's target.

June's inflation "is really only a small step in the right direction," noted Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch Ratings, in an email. "Core inflation remains just under 5% on both a year-on-year and three-month annualized basis, which is far too high."

Here's what the latest data means for your money. 

How does inflation work?

Inflation is the increase in prices of goods and services, with the Consumer Price Index measuring a basket of items that are typically purchased by U.S. households, ranging from groceries to cars. 

In the past two years, inflation suddenly jumped higher, reaching a 40-year high in 2022. But the reasons for the inflationary spike are debated among economists, with some blaming corporate price gouging and others pointing to more classic supply-and-demand issues. 

Many economists have pointed to strong pandemic demand sparked by stimulus checks, coming at a time when supply was constrained by supply-chain breakdowns, as the cause for the run-up in inflation.

What does the June CPI mean for interest rates?

Sure, inflation is coming down, but it may not be falling fast enough to satisfy the Federal Reserve. 

Some economists are forecasting that the central bank will boost interest rates by one-quarter of a percentage point at its meeting later this month, scheduled for July 25-26. If the Fed raises rates again in July, consumers could face even higher borrowing costs.

Credit card APRs — already at a historic high — and mortgage rates could continue to rise if the Fed boosts rates in July because such debt tends to move in tandem with the underlying Federal Funds Rate. 

Even so, June's cooling inflation suggests that the Fed could ease up on interest rate hikes after July, some economists said.

"It is enough on a standalone basis for the market to put in question the Fed's dot projections of two additional hikes left this year," noted Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, deputy CIO of multi asset solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, in an email.

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Does this impact Social Security benefits? 

Yes, because Social Security benefits are adjusted annually for inflation — and the Social Security Administration bases its cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) on inflation data from July, August and September. 

While CPI data for those three months isn't available yet, some forecasters are projecting their estimates for the 2024 COLA based on inflation trends so far this year. With prices cooling, some are projecting that the nation's seniors will see a much smaller boost next year.

The COLA could be 3% next year, based on the June data, according to the Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group for older Americans. Another group, the think-tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said on Wednesday it estimates Social Security beneficiaries will receive a COLA of 2.6% to 3.3%, depending on where inflation falls in the next three months.

Are any items still seeing big price increases?

A few products and services are still seeing relatively high price increases, according to the June data. Housing, which includes rent and what homeowners pay for their properties, jumped 7.8% last month. Car insurance surged almost 17%, while restaurant prices jumped 7.7%, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. 

Housing inflation remains a major concern for consumers, and was the largest contributor to June's rise in prices. 

But economists expect that housing prices will begin to dip later in the year, helped by new construction. "Rents have been coming down in places where new rental construction has been coming online," noted Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant. "More supply, even with steady or rising demand, lowers costs."

Where are Americans getting price breaks?

Prices are falling in several major spending categories, with energy costs representing the biggest drop. Gasoline is about 27% cheaper than a year earlier, labor data shows. Used car prices are also lower, with a 5.2% dip last month, while airline fares plunged almost 19%. 

On the grocery front, some items are paring their pandemic price gains, with eggs dropping almost 8%. That follows a surge in egg prices earlier this year that stunned some consumers and prompted some people to raise their own backyard chickens . Other grocery items with price cuts include pork, bacon and butter. 

The slowdown in inflation "will buy investors time and give them the opportunity to catch their breath," noted Wilson-Elizondo of Goldman Sachs.

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Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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An Inflation Test Looms Over the Economy and the Election

The pivotal Consumer Price Index report is set to be published on Wednesday as the window for interest-rate cuts before November is closing.

By Andrew Ross Sorkin ,  Ravi Mattu ,  Bernhard Warner ,  Sarah Kessler ,  Michael J. de la Merced ,  Lauren Hirsch and Ephrat Livni

Another inflation surprise?

Wall Street is increasingly divided over whether the Fed will cut interest rates by Election Day. New inflation data out this week will go a long way toward settling that question, as polls show that President Biden is struggling to convince voters that he’s done a good job on the economy.

It’s a big week for economic data with mixed signals on inflation. A first-quarter uptick in inflation has forced the Fed to keep borrowing costs at a 23-year high. Economists see a slight improvement, forecasting that April’s Consumer Price Index report on Wednesday will show that inflation moderated slightly last month .

Such good news would follow a tamer than expected May 3 jobs report , which saw wage growth easing. (Economists will also be watching Tuesday’s Producer Price Index and retail sales data on Wednesday.)

What will it take for the Fed to start cutting rates? The central bank “will need to see at least three benign core inflation prints, perhaps even four, before easing policy,” Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo, wrote in a research note last week. That makes the C.P.I. data crucial, she added, as “time is running out on the clock for even a late summer rate cut.”

Here’s what economists will be zeroing in on:

Core C.P.I., which strips out volatile food and fuel prices, is expected to rise by 0.3 percent on a monthly basis — an improvement from the 0.4 percent monthly jumps seen in January, February and March.

On an annual basis, core C.P.I. is seen rising by 3.6 percent — an improvement on March’s 3.8 percent, but still well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.

So-called shelter inflation, which includes rents and housing costs, is still running hot . Any sign of easing is likely to influence the Fed’s outlook on interest rates.

Consumers and companies alike are worried about inflation. On Friday, the closely watched University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey showed that households are increasingly worried about the cost of living and a slowing jobs market. That comes in an earning season when several dozen C.E.O.s have told analysts that their less affluent customers are cutting back because of high prices. That raises the question: Are these signs that consumer spending is under pressure helping to bring down inflation?

The futures market on Monday was penciling in as many as two rate cuts this year, with the first coming in September. But those odds have fallen steadily since the start of the year — and some rate hawks even see no cuts this year — as inflation has rebounded.

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

The European Union is reportedly ready to file antitrust charges against Microsoft. The bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, will accuse the tech giant of undermining rivals of its Teams collaboration app , according to The Financial Times. Such a move would come even after Microsoft offered to unbundle Teams from its Office software suite around the world, though The F.T. said that Microsoft could still settle the case.

Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama prepare for a historic union vote. The ballot this week follows a watershed victory for the labor movement at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee last month. It’s the latest test of the United Automobile Workers’s effort to expand its presence to nonunion U.S. factories, but the vote is facing strong opposition from Republican lawmakers and other anti-union forces.

SoftBank’s investments help it beat earnings estimates. The Japanese tech investor reported 231 billion yen, or about $1.5 billion, in profit for the first quarter , compared with a 57.6 billion yen loss a year ago; driving that were gains in investments in Arm and other assets. (Its Vision Funds suffered from paper markdowns in its portfolio.) SoftBank’s C.F.O., Yoshimitsu Goto, said the company was prepared to invest heavily, especially in artificial intelligence.

Students at Duke protest Jerry Seinfeld at their commencement. As the comedian, who has been vocal in his support of Israel, received an honorary degree, dozens walked out , chanting, “Free, free Palestine” while other students walked around campus calling for the school to divest its Israel-tied holdings. It was the latest sign of the tensions on college campuses over the war in Gaza; meanwhile, the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin said the protests are “ almost like performative art .”

Elon Musk’s megaphone politics

Elon Musk won a reprieve in an Australian court on Monday after a judge refused to extend a ban on X from publishing videos from a grisly knife attack at a church in Sydney last month. The victory comes as Musk faces off against a number of governments over content on his social media platform: He says he’s defending free speech, but others argue he’s using X to push his other commercial interests.

Musk is using X to boost Tesla and SpaceX, write The Times’s Ryan Mac, Jack Nicas and Alex Travelli . His posts have helped turn Javier Milei, Argentina’s right-wing libertarian president, into a rising political superstar. One possible reason: Argentina has huge reserves of lithium, a key material for Tesla’s car batteries. “Elon Musk called me,” Milei said after taking office. “He is extremely interested in the lithium.”

Musk has used the playbook elsewhere. In India, before he bought Twitter, the company often fought government efforts to kill content it didn’t like. Since Musk bought the company, he has lauded Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, on X, and backed some of his pet causes.

X has also complied with a contentious take-down order . The company agreed to block links to a BBC documentary about Modi’s role in sectarian violence (Musk says it had no choice). In January, Musk said on X that India should get a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Two months later, India lowered import tariffs on E.V.s like Tesla’s Model 3 to 15 percent of a car’s price from 100 percent.

Critics say Musk is inconsistent. The company has stopped releasing transparency reports that detail the number of government requests to remove content, or sharing the data with Harvard researchers. The Tesla boss is “cherry picking” when to fight back, Nu Wexler, a former Twitter executive, told The Financial Times. “If a government wants something taken down, the calculus at [X] is now: is that country going to buy electric cars from us?”

Remembering Jim Simons

The death last week of Jim Simons at 86 marked the loss of a transformative Wall Street figure.

It was Simons, a chain-smoking mathematician who jumped into finance after a career as an academic and Cold War code breaker, who introduced the idea of computer-driven, rapid-fire trading — and made billions doing so.

Simons went against the common wisdom. When he set up what became Renaissance Technologies in 1978, Wall Street relied mainly on old-school fundamental investing: the kind of close analysis of company financials and intuitive sense of where a stock would go that made financiers like Warren Buffett wealthy.

But Simons believed that computers could ingest huge amounts of data, discern patterns and make lightning-fast trades. His company made mistakes early on — consider the brief moment when Renaissance cornered the market in Maine potatoes — but eventually established the field of quantitative investing.

The results spoke for themselves. At its peak, Renaissance’s flagship Medallion fund produced average returns of 66 percent before fees, The Wall Street Journal reports. That helped make Simons a billionaire, with a fortune estimated at $31 billion by Forbes.

So-called quant firms now manage about a third of all money, according to The Journal — and the approach has been embraced even by traditional asset managers.

Leading investors paid tribute to Simons:

“Jim Simons was the greatest — an unbelievably great investor, philanthropist, and man of character,” Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates wrote on X.

“There is one GOAT [greatest of all time],” the billionaire Cliff Asness told The Journal. “His name was Jim Simons.”

“There are just a few individuals who have truly changed how we view the markets,” Theodore Aronson , the founder of AJO Vista, told Bloomberg. “John Maynard Keynes is one of the few. Warren Buffett is one of the few. So is Jim Simons.”

Simons also made a mark elsewhere. He gave huge amounts to philanthropy, including hundreds of millions to Stony Brook University, where he had taught before getting into finance.

He also became a major Democratic donor, giving $109 million since 2015 to the likes of President Biden and Hillary Clinton. (That said, Robert Mercer, an early Renaissance employee who later became co-C.E.O., became a top donor to Republican politicians — including Donald Trump .)

“The shake-up is about consolidating the role of the military-industrial complex as the main locomotive of the economy.”

— Evgeny Suvorov , the chief Russia economist at CentroCredit Bank, on the move this weekend by President Vladimir Putin of Russia to appoint the economist Andrey Belousov as defense chief. Suvorov said it’s a sign that Russia plans to pour more economic resources into its war effort in Ukraine.

The week ahead

Beyond inflation data, announcements about artificial intelligence services and earnings are in the spotlight this week. Here’s what to watch.

Monday: OpenAI is set to announce updates for its GPT-4 A.I. model and its ChatGPT chatbot. The company is also near a deal with Apple to power A.I. services on the newest version of iOS, according to Bloomberg.

(The Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

Tuesday: Home Depot, Sony, Alibaba and Bayer are set to report earnings. And Google holds its annual developers conference , which will focus on A.I.

Thursday: Walmart, Deere and Under Armour report results.

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The S.E.C.’s closure of BF Borgers, the audit firm that counted Donald Trump’s social media company as a client, could derail the I.P.O. plans of other start-ups. (FT)

Anglo American shareholders want the mining giant to speed up an announcement of its turnaround plan after the company rebuffed a $39 billion takeover offer from rival BHP. (Bloomberg)

“In DC, a new wave of AI lobbyists gains the upper hand” (Politico)

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, called on the F.T.C. to closely scrutinize Chevron’s proposed $53 billion takeover of a smaller rival, Hess, warning of potentially higher oil prices if it goes through. (@SenSchumer)

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The auction house Christie’s will proceed this week with sales that usually account for more than half of its revenue, despite a cyberattack on Thursday that took down its website. (NYT)

Roger Corman , the B-movie producer who also helped propel the careers of Hollywood auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, died on Thursday. He was 98. (NYT)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder and editor at large of DealBook. He is a co-anchor of CNBC’s "Squawk Box" and the author of “Too Big to Fail.” He is also a co-creator of the Showtime drama series "Billions." More about Andrew Ross Sorkin

Ravi Mattu is the managing editor of DealBook, based in London. He joined The New York Times in 2022 from the Financial Times, where he held a number of senior roles in Hong Kong and London. More about Ravi Mattu

Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets. More about Bernhard Warner

Sarah Kessler is an editor for the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business and how workplaces are changing. More about Sarah Kessler

Michael de la Merced joined The Times as a reporter in 2006, covering Wall Street and finance. Among his main coverage areas are mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies and the private equity industry. More about Michael J. de la Merced

Lauren Hirsch joined The Times from CNBC in 2020, covering deals and the biggest stories on Wall Street. More about Lauren Hirsch

Ephrat Livni reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Quartz, covering law and politics, and has practiced law in the public and private sectors.   More about Ephrat Livni