One of the US Fed’s favoured measures of inflation is the change in the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. After hitting the Fed’s target at 2.0% in mid-2018, the annual rate then hovered in a range between 1.8% and 2.0% through to the end of 2018. Since then, the annual rate has fallen back to around 1.5%.
The latest figures have now been published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis as part of the April personal income and expenditures report. Core PCE inflation was +0.2% for the month, up from March’s flat result and higher than the flat result which had been expected. On a 12-month basis, the core PCE inflation rate inched up from March’s revised figure of 1.5% to 1.6%.
