What To Expect From Thursday’s Report On CPI Inflation

High inflation just won’t die. At least not yet.

A belated report Thursday is likely to show the Consumer Price Index rose 3.1% over the year in November, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. That would be up from 3% in September and mark the highest annual inflation since May 2024. Core inflation is expected to have risen 3% over the year, the same as September, by the median forecast.

Inflation has steadily risen since April, when President Donald Trump announced steep import taxes against nearly every U.S. trading partner. Businesses have passed on some of the tariff costs to consumers, pushing up overall inflation even as price increases for some important categories unaffected by tariffs, such as rent, have cooled down.

Accelerating inflation would worsen the dilemma faced by the Federal Reserve, which aims to keep inflation running at a 2% annual rate and has failed to do so since 2021.

Inflation had nearly cooled to that point in January after surging during the pandemic, but tariffs have kept it stubbornly high. Some members of the Fed’s policy committee have argued for keeping the central bank’s key interest rate high to discourage spending and quell inflation. However, they have been outvoted by the majority, which has favored cutting rates to boost the faltering job market.

What Was Inflation In October? We’ll Never Know

The BLS’s November inflation report was originally scheduled to be published eight days earlier, but was delayed. The bureau had to play catch-up after the government shutdown in October and November disrupted data collection for all statistical agencies. The Bureau said it would not publish a report for October at all, leaving an unprecedented gap in the data.

Many forecasters expect inflation to start cooling off later in the year as tariff price hikes will have worked their way through the system.

“The lingering effects of tariffs are likely to cause a further uptick in goods inflation over the next few months as firms revisit pricing early next year, but we expect overall inflation to hold near 3.0% through the first half of 2026,” forecasters at Wells Fargo Securities, led by Sarah House, wrote in a commentary. “As the year progresses, we anticipate easing tariff pressures, a soft labor market and solid productivity gains will spur a gradual descent toward 2%.”