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Wednesday, April 10, 2024

YoY Measures of Inflation: Services, Goods and Shelter

by Calculated Risk on 4/10/2024 08:54:00 AM

Here are a few measures of inflation:

The first graph is the one Fed Chair Powell had mentioned when services less rent of shelter was up around 8% year-over-year.  This declined, but has turned up recently, and is now up 4.8% YoY.

Services ex-ShelterClick on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the YoY price change for Services and Services less rent of shelter through March 2024.


Services were up 5.3% YoY as of March 2024, unchanged from 5.0% YoY in February.

Services less rent of shelter was up 4.8% YoY in March, up from 3.9% YoY in February.

Goods CPIThe second graph shows that goods prices started to increase year-over-year (YoY) in 2020 and accelerated in 2021 due to both strong demand and supply chain disruptions.

Durables were at -2.1% YoY as of March 2024, down from -1.6% YoY in February.

Commodities less food and energy commodities were at -0.7% YoY in March, down from -0.3% YoY in February.

ShelterHere is a graph of the year-over-year change in shelter from the CPI report (through March) and housing from the PCE report (through February)

Shelter was up 5.6% year-over-year in March, down from 5.8% in February. Housing (PCE) was up 5.8% YoY in February, down from 6.1% in January.

This is still catching up with private data.  The BLS noted this morning: "The index for shelter rose in March, as did the index for gasoline. Combined, these two indexes contributed over half of the monthly increase in the index for all items."

Core CPI ex-shelter was up 2.4% YoY in March, up from 2.2% in February.