Wholesale prices in the United States rose 6% in January from a year earlier, decelerating for a seventh straight month. But on a month-to-month basis, prices reaccelerated in January, indicating that inflation pressures continue to underlie the U.S. economy.
The latest year-over-year wholesale inflation figure was down from 6.5% in December and from a recent peak of 11.7% in March. From December to January, though, the government’s producer price index jumped 0.7%, driven up in part by a 5% surge in energy prices. That compared with a 0.2% drop from November to December, and it was nearly twice the increase that economists were expecting.