After a year without increases, inflation began to rise again in July, driven particularly by housing prices.
Despite the increase in gasoline, energy prices have fallen 3.6% since August 2022.
Excluding the most volatile prices of energy and food, the so-called core inflation stood at 0.3% in August compared to 0.2% the previous month. However, the interannual rate of this index fell from 4.7% in July to 4.3% in August.
Fed meeting
The figures come a week before the US central bank (Fed) meets to decide whether to raise rates again in the hope of reducing inflation, or keep them at their current level so as not to affect economic activity too much.
The reference rate is now in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, its highest level in 22 years, after being increased 11 times since March 2022.
However, the Fed prioritizes the PCE in making its decisions, an inflation index that rose to 3.3% year-on-year in July and that the Federal Reserve wants to place around 2%.
Inflation is a key issue in the US electoral campaign ahead of the November 2024 presidential elections.
Democrat Joe Biden insists that his economic policy made it possible to stop inflation, which had skyrocketed to 9.1% year-on-year in June 2022, the highest since the early 1980s.
Although wages in the United States increased in 2022, the rise in inflation caused a loss of purchasing power of 2.3%.
The labor shortage in the world’s leading economy caused salaries to skyrocket, thus driving up prices.