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The federal government delivered a cost-of-living report Friday. A spike in gasoline prices triggered by the war with Iran contributed to inflation reaching its highest level in nearly two years.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Labor Department issued a report card this morning on the cost of living. It's going up. That's largely due to a wartime spike in energy prices. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So how exactly has the war impacted inflation?
HORSLEY: Well, today's report shows that consumer prices in March were up 3.3% from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase in almost two years. Prices rose nearly a full percent between February and March, and a big part of that is the spike in gasoline prices we've seen since the U.S. and Israel launched their war with Iran. The average price of gasoline on the eve of that war was just under $3 a gallon. Today, it's 4.15, according to AAA. And while the fragile ceasefire this week has provided a little break in crude oil prices, retail gas prices are expected to remain high for some time to come.
FADEL: Is gas the only factor behind the surge?
HORSLEY: No, but it's certainly the most visible price hike. You know, jet fuel prices are also up. That's pushing up the price of airline tickets. Eventually, the higher price for diesel fuel is also going to filter into the cost of other goods that have to get trucked around the country, although that will probably take another month or two to show up in the official data. You know, inflation is nowhere near as high as we saw back in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. But after a couple of years when inflation was coming down, it kind of flatlined last year as President Trump's tariffs kicked in. And Austan Goolsbee, who heads the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, says now this wartime price hike on top of tariffs is really making for a one-two punch.
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AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: We were making progress, making progress. Then we kind of stalled out, and now it's been inching itself up the other way.
HORSLEY: Goolsbee told the Detroit Economic Club this week that the longer inflation remains above the Fed's target of 2%, the higher the risk that, you know, stubborn inflation becomes baked into the economy.
FADEL: How is the Federal Reserve likely to react to a sharp jump in inflation?
HORSLEY: Well, Fed policymakers typically try not to overreact to a jump in gas prices, since they're notorious for going up and down. But the trouble is core inflation, which strips out energy and food prices, is also high - 2.6% in March. So that is likely to make the Fed cautious about any more cuts in interest rates, at least until they can see how long-lasting these wartime price increases might be.
FADEL: The Fed's other big job is monitoring the labor market. How's that looking?
HORSLEY: It's looking a little bit stronger. You know, employers added 178,000 jobs in March after cutting more than a hundred thousand workers the previous month. There's still not a whole lot of hiring going on outside the health care industry, but there's not a lot of firing either. And Goolsbee thinks a lot of businesses are just sort of in a holding pattern right now.
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GOOLSBEE: I think it's from uncertainty. I think that's what happens when businesses are uncertain and they say, we're just going to sit on our hands until we figure out, is the war - is this going to be a temporary shock?
HORSLEY: You know, as painful as the jump in gas prices has been, Goolsbee notes the U.S. economy is a lot less dependent on energy, especially imported energy now, than it was during the oil shocks of the '70s. So we should be able to better weather this burst of inflation without long-lasting economic damage.
FADEL: NPR's Scott Horsley. Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
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