Price pressures continued cooling last month, fresh inflation figures showed, likely deterring the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates at its September meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported. The consumer-price index, a measure of goods and services prices across the economy, rose a mild 0.2% in July, the same as in June, the Labor Department said Thursday. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy categories, also increased just 0.2% in both months, extending a broader slowdown in price pressures. The figures led to 3.2% annual inflation in July, up from 3% in June. Annual core inflation ticked down to 4.7% in July from June’s 4.8%. The pickup in annual inflation was influenced by what happened in July of 2022, which serves as the basis for comparison. Economists don’t expect the annual rate of inflation to slow much more this year in part because of so-called base effects.
