Inflation rose 0.4% in October as shutdown leaves a data gap

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday, picking up slightly from a 0.6 percent jump in September but landing in line with Wall Street forecasts. The official release, USDL-26-1685, showed core prices — excluding the volatile food and energy categories — up 0.3 percent for a third consecutive month, a sign that underlying inflation pressure has settled into a steady, if uncomfortable, pace rather than reaccelerating sharply.

Unusually, the report did not include the 12-month inflation rate that normally leads every CPI release. BLS said it could not calculate the year-over-year comparison because it never collected October 2025 data in the first place: that month fell during the lapse in federal appropriations that shut down large parts of the government last fall, the longest shutdown in US history.

Where the pressure is coming from

Within the report, food prices rose 0.5 percent, with grocery prices up 0.4 percent and restaurant and takeout prices up 0.5 percent. Energy costs climbed 0.7 percent after a far larger 5.2 percent spike in September, as gasoline rose 1.0 percent and electricity 0.9 percent, even as natural gas prices eased 0.8 percent. Shelter rose a more modest 0.3 percent but still accounted for more than 30 percent of the entire monthly increase in the all-items index. Recreation costs rose 0.8 percent and motor vehicle insurance 0.7 percent, while used car and truck prices fell 1.2 percent, one of the few categories offering relief.

A mixed economic signal

The inflation data arrived days after a notably stronger jobs report. The White House, in a release touting the October employment figures, said the economy added 165,000 jobs — more than double the roughly 65,000 economists had expected — while the unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent and average hourly earnings rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier. Taken together, the two reports describe an economy still generating jobs and wage gains at a healthy clip while prices continue to climb faster than the Fed's long-standing 2 percent target, a combination that complicates the central bank's calculus heading into its final policy meeting of the year.

BLS has flagged other lingering effects of last year's funding lapse on its own data collection: the agency's CPI program page notes that it suspended price collection entirely in three metro areas — Lincoln, Nebraska; Provo, Utah; and Buffalo, New York — starting last summer, and is separately correcting erroneous energy-index figures published for the Baltimore area between June and September. None of those changes affect the national headline number released Tuesday, but they add to a pattern of a statistical agency working with a thinner margin for error than usual. The next CPI report, covering November, is due Dec. 10.