Feds: Inflation continued to rise in April

Inflation soared earlier in President Joe Biden’s administration, with prices for some things like groceries increasing more than 10% in one year alone. The U.S. Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates nearly a dozen times to help get inflation down, helping push the average mortgage interest rate above 7%.

Those price increases have slowed, but economists say the U.S. economy is still far from returning to the healthy inflation rate of about 2% annually.

“Another high reading for core PCE inflation, up 4.7% at an annual rate in April – and a 4.3% annual rate over the last three months, continuing its sideways move,” Jason Furman, a Harvard professor and former economic advisor to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter. “But, under the hood it looks a little better as noisy items and imputations drove a lot of the extra high reading. Overall where does this leave us? The 4.7% for core PCE in April is too pessimistic a read of the inflation situation. But there is nothing in this report that would give any comfort that inflation is on track to fall to 3.5% or below w/o a further easing of the labor market.”