The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released April 2019 Consumer Price Indexes (CPI) today. The all items category increased 0.5% over the last month & rose by 2.0% over the last year while All items less food and energy increased 0.2% between March – April 2019 and rose by 2.1% between April ’18 – ’19. The Commodities less food and energy commodities category decreased 0.1% over the last month & decreased by 0.2% over the last year. Major appliances increased 1.8% between March – April 2019 and rose by 5.6% between April ’18 – ’19. Newspapers and magazines increased 1.5% over the last month & rose by 4.8% over the last year. Medical equipment and supplies increased 2.0% between March – April 2019 & rose by 3.8% between April ’18 – ’19. Appliances increased 0.7% over the last month & rose by 3.3% over the last year (all inflation rates are seasonally unadjusted indexes).
Shown below are historical inflation rates through April for selected CPI categories:
CPI v. PPI Supermarket Inflation Comparison for April 2019
The historical CPI v. PPI supermarket inflation spread is shown in the table below:
BLS LIFO Resources & Links
Use of PPI Indexes by Supermarkets to Increase Tax Deferral Blog
IPIC LIFO Advantages
PPI Inflation History
April '19 BLS CPI Economic News Release