US September PCE price up 3.6% year-on-year… Slightly lower than expected (comprehensive)

(New York = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Yeon-sook = The U.S. Department of Commerce announced on the 29th (local time) that the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index in September rose 3.6% compared to the same month last year.

This is slightly below the expert forecast (3.7%) compiled by Dow Jones.

Compared to the previous month, it rose 0.5%, meeting expert forecasts. The rate of increase increased compared to the previous month in August (0.3%).

Excluding energy and food, the September core PCE price index rose 3.1% compared to the previous year and 0.3% compared to the previous month, in line with expert forecasts.

By item, product prices rose 0.8% compared to the previous month, and service prices also rose 0.3%.

In particular, prices for gasoline and other energy products surged 9.2%, leading to an increase in overall product prices.

In the service sector, transportation services jumped by 2.1%, housing and public rates (0.3%), financial services and insurance (0.4%), and food and beverage and lodging services (0.4%) all showed upward trends.

The PCE price index is a price index that reflects the prices of goods and services consumed by households.

The Federal Reserve System (Fed) uses this as the standard when determining whether the monetary policy goal of '2% inflation rate' has been achieved.

At a press conference the previous day, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Worth repeatedly emphasized the goal of achieving the 2% inflation target based on PCE, saying that U.S. prices are still too high.

“Prices for energy and related items have risen again in recent weeks,” said Wash. “Our challenge is to ensure that relative price changes in certain sectors do not spread across the economy and that inflation expectations remain stable.”

According to FedWatch of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the interest rate futures market today sees an 83.3% chance of the Federal Reserve's base rate hike in December.

In line with the rise in prices, September personal income and disposable income, which were also announced today, each increased only 0.2% compared to the previous month. The personal savings rate was calculated to be 3.8%.