The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.4 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, after increasing 0.1 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 4.9 percent before seasonal adjustment.
Remember me pointing out that gasoline was wildly down right in front of the last CPI but had been trending back up, and as a result that would come back out? It did.
The index for shelter was the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase, followed by increases in the index for used cars and trucks and the index for gasoline.
Gee, all those are optional purchases, right? Oh, wait......
All items less food and energy was up 5.5% annualized, which is wildly above Fed "target" of course. Yet the instant reaction in the futures was to spike higher. Not a lot, but spike it did and the all items less food and energy trendline is basically flat since December. At this sort of rate of change The Fed will be hiking rates for about two more years and they'll be around 8% or so with quarter-point hikes every time until that happens. Of course that's not what the market thinks.
Real average weekly earnings decreased 0.3 percent over the month due to no change in real average hourly earnings being combined with a decrease of 0.3 percent in the average workweek.
Yep, there's no hourly earnings change in real terms (they're going up as fast as inflation) but the workweek is being cut which I've pointed out has been in the BLS data for quite some time. The last jobs report suggested this might be leveling off.
This report says no, that was a blip and is not fact.
Employers are cutting hours and what you're paid an hour is immaterial.
What matters is the size of your weekly check and it is going down in real terms to the tune of about 4% a year.