Nobody cared much about yesterday’s inflation release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics because it didn’t show much of anything new. But that’s no reason to ignore it. Here it is:
As you can see, the upward blip at the start of 2018 is long gone, and inflation is now running at a very sedate 1.6 percent. There’s very little reason for the Fed or anyone else to be worried about inflation running out of control at the moment. BLS also released the January numbers for average earnings:
The average hourly earnings for all American workers clocked in at $27.56 in January. Thanks to low inflation, this translated into a 1.6 percent gain from last year. Not bad.
