The big question on the pickup in inflation is whether it will persist. The big problem is that the answer won’t be clear until the beginning of next year at the earliest.
The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that consumer prices rose 0.9% in October from September, putting them 6.2% above their year-earlier level. Some of the increase was due to a jump in fuel costs, but prices excluding food and energy items—the so-called core that is used to better capture inflation’s trend—were up 4.6% from a year earlier. That marked the largest gain in core prices since 1991.