Inflation declined in March, with annual core consumer prices rising at their slowest pace in four years. Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Alexandra Canal joins Morning Brief to highlight key takeaways, including a drop in energy prices, a continued rise in food costs, and a slowdown in shelter inflation.
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Inflation fell in the month of March with annual core consumer prices rising at the slowest rate in four years. Joining us for a category breakdown, our very own Alexandra Canal. Ally, what are you looking at?
Hi. Well, obviously a very solid print. However, you really have to take this with a grain of salt, since as you were just talking about Trump's tariffs. It's going to complicate things moving forward. But if we take a look at categories, the one that really stood out to me was the energy sector, particularly gasoline. On a month-over-month basis, we fell 6.3%. On a yearly basis, down almost 10%
percent that brought the overall energy index down by 3.3% on that annual basis. Uh so that was a positive when we think about the uh way down that's been on the consumer recently. But then we also have the opposite effect when we think of something like food. And to that point, food remained sticky. We actually saw an acceleration during the month of March, 0.4% on a month over month basis. That's compared to just 0.2% in February. And that leaves the 12-month food increase at 2.4%
percent. Food away from home continues to be expensive, almost up 4% year-over-year. Food at home a little less expensive, but still not uh doing too hot if you want to make your food at home, 2.4% on an annual basis. And then uh when you think about things like shelter services, that's kept core inflation very elevated, but we did see further signs of easing when it comes to shelter over the month of March. Uh annual uh core prices, as we said, rose at their slowest pace since March 2021. Shelter helping with that, the index decelerated on a monthly basis. Um and then as well, we saw a a lowering in the annual number, the smallest 12-month increase in fact, since November 2021. Also a decrease in used car prices, which we know have been a little volatile over the past few months. So, overall, I I think this is a solid soft print, but policy makers, they're not going to be able to do too much with this. And we've heard from Jerome Powell, we've heard from several FOMC officials who say that they really are in wait and see mode. They need to see what tariffs actually go into effect, how this plays out, what's the ripple effect through the economy. And right now, we just don't have those answers. And I think considering all the whiplash that we saw this past week, it's very clear that things could continue to change moving forward.
For the SEO, did we mention eggs yet?
Oh yeah, eggs. How can we forget eggs? 5.9%. Yeah, and on a year-over-year basis, we're up over 60%.
5.9% increase.
So that's something again related to food just, you know, really pressuring the consumer.