Inflation Cooled Further in September, PCE Index Shows

Inflation has been cooling for two years, and fresh data released on Thursday showed that trend continued in September. Prices climbed just 2.1 percent compared with a year earlier.

That is nearly back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent inflation goal — good news for both the Fed and the White House. It is also slower than the previous reading, which stood at 2.3 percent.

Still, the report also shows evidence that price increases remain stickier under the surface.

A closely watched inflation measure that strips out volatile food and fuel costs to give a sense of the underlying trend in prices was up 2.7 percent in September compared with a year earlier. That “core” inflation figure was unchanged from the previous reading, a sign that it was proving slow to cool. And on a monthly basis, core inflation actually accelerated slightly.

While the figures were largely in line with what economists had expected, the stubbornness in core inflation reinforced that the Fed’s campaign to wrestle price increases back under control was not entirely finished.

“All in all, this is a relatively good report,” said Omair Sharif, founder of the firm Inflation Insights. But he added that he thought core inflation could remain too quick for comfort in coming months, before fading more completely early next year.

“It’s not a mission accomplished kind of number,” he said.

The Fed lifted interest rates sharply in 2022 and early 2023 to try to slow the economy and wrestle inflation under control. But officials slashed them by half a percentage point in September, cutting interest rates for the first time in four years.