U.S. consumer prices climbed more than expected in March

Yahoo Finance’s Emily McCormick breaks down the latest Consumer Price Index data.

Video Transcript

- Traders are closely analyzing this morning's hotter than expected Consumer Price Index data to see if a nasty inflationary outbreak is starting to build with the economy gaining steam again. Yahoo Finance's markets reporter Emily McCormick is here with the latest. Emily?

EMILY MCCORMICK: Well Brian, we did see consumer prices rise more than expected in March over last month and last year, in one of the first signs of rising prices during this COVID-19 recovery. And we saw the Headline Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics rising 6/10 of a percent in March over February. Consensus economists were looking for a rise of just half a percent. But excluding volatile food and energy prices, we did see the CPI up just 3/10 of percent in March over February, but still slightly faster than the 0.2% rise that had been anticipated.

Now year over year, we did see the CPI rise 2.6%. That was the fastest annual increase that we've seen since 2018, and much faster than the 1.7% rise that we saw in February. But excluding food and energy prices, the CPI was up 1.6% year over year in March following a rise of 1.3% in February.

Now by category, I do want to highlight that the big takeaway here is really that rising energy prices were a major contributor to the monthly and the yearly gain in the CPI. That was especially true for gasoline prices, which are up more than 9% over last month and 22.5% over last year. We should note that we also saw notable increases in used car and truck prices over last year, as well as in food prices both away and at home, which were both up more than 3% year over year.

Now also, we should caveat that these consumer price increases are bouncing off of last year's pandemic-depressed levels. That's a fact that Fed chair Jerome Powell has reiterated continuously over the past couple of months. So we'll see in these coming CPI, PPI, and core personal consumption expenditures reports whether these inflationary pressures do end up being transitory or more long standing. Brian?

- Emily McCormick. Thanks so much.