by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Worst food inflation since 2022. Worst housing inflation in months. But plunging prices for lodging, rental cars, and airfares are interesting.
In the Consumer Price Index today, month-to-month inflation accelerated further for housing, food, medical care services, and motor vehicle maintenance and repair, showing the worst increases in many months, and in the case of food, in years.
But these price increases were overpowered by plunging gasoline prices, and by plunging prices in the travel sector – month-to-month not annualized: lodging away from home (-3.5%), airline fares (-5.3%), and rental cars (-2.7%). These are huge month-to-month drops, annualized between -28% and -48%.