White House on CPI Where Inflation Rose: ‘We See Prices Continuing to Ease’

On Thursday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Sound On,” White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein reacted to the December CPI report showing the CPI increasing by 0.3% for the month after a 0.1% monthly increase in November for a 3.4% yearly rate after a 3.1% yearly rate in November with core inflation running at 3.9% annually after being at 4.0% annually in November and at 0.3% for the month, the same as in November.

Bernstein said, [relevant remarks begin around 27:50] “Any month can bump one way or the other, and I know, Joe, I’ve emphasized this in our discussions, we at the Council of Economic Advisers make a point out of never overemphasizing a particular month. And, in fact, by the way, if you look at the pace of the headline CPI inflation over the past three months annualized, it’s still 1.8%, and that’s because the last three months were 0, 0.1, 0.3. So, do the math and you get that kind of underlying trend [that] remains the friend of those who want to see inflation continue to come down. You mentioned goods prices. I think the unsnarling supply chains [are] very much baked in the cake and we saw goods prices continue to be very low. So, look, core inflation, very important to the Fed, core inflation, of course, hit expectations. 0.3 was expected, 0.3 was delivered. So, we see prices continuing to ease, job market remaining strong and the combination of those two is delivering real wage gains, which we also learned about this morning, and that’s a trend, not a blip. We’ve seen real wages up about 1% over the past year and they’ve been rising now for a while, very important to our working families.”

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