The Labor Department came out with the latest inflation figures yesterday, and they remain fairly low. For the month of March, the consumer price index rose just 1.5 percent, which is below the Federal Reserve's target rate of 2 percent. That's the fourth month in the last five that the annual inflation rate has been below 2 percent.
Labor's core inflation number, which strips out the more volatile food and energy prices, rose by 1.9 percent. It was also the fourth month out of the last five that core inflation stayed below 2 percent.
All those figures are on an annualized basis. If you just look at the month-to-month changes, the core price index rose by 0.1 percent in March. Because the price of gas has been slipping lately, the overall inflation rate, including energy and food, actually fell by 0.2 percent.
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