, which showed an acceleration in job and wage growth in April as well the unemployment rate falling back to a 53-year low of 3.4%.
It is one of two inflation reports that U.S. central bank officials will have in hand at their June 13-14 policy meeting. Higher inflation and labor market resilience make it unlikely that the Fed will start cutting interest rates this year as currently expected by financial markets.interest rate by another 25 basis points to the 5.00%-5.25% range last week, and signaled it may pause its fastest monetary policy tightening campaign since the 1980s, though it kept a hawkish bias. The Fed has hiked its policy rate by 500 basis points since March 2022.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI increased 0.4% last month, matching March's gain. The so-called core CPI was lifted by used cars and trucks, which increased for the first time since last June.The government reported last week that the rental vacancy rate increased to a two-year high in the first quarter. Also, independent measures have been showing rents on a downward trend and rent measures in the CPI tend to lag the independent gauges.