Thursday’s inflation report did not provide the news that Vice President Kamala Harris was likely hoping to receive as prices overall ticked up slightly in September.
Further, jobless claims also hit a 14-month high in last week of 258,000, even as a robust 254,000 jobs were added last month, which was above expectations.
The Labor Department reported the consumer price index rose 0.2 percent in September for an annual inflation rate of 2.4 percent.
“Economists predicted that inflation would slow to 2.3% on an annual basis with it rising 0.1% from last month, according to estimates by economists surveyed by LSEG,” Fox Business reported.
Additionally, the core inflation rate — which does not include the more volatile food and energy prices — rose 0.3 percent for an annual rate of 3.3 percent, which was higher than the 0.2 percent expected.
The core inflation index includes such items as shelter, motor vehicle insurance, medical care, apparel and airlines fares.
Politico noted that polls show voters trust former President Donald Trump over Harris with the economy.
“While Harris is performing better than Biden was against Trump on handling the economy … being given some benefit of the doubt as a newer candidate, voters still feel that day-to-day costs are expensive and thus there is a limit to how much improvement this news [of a lower annual inflation rate] will bring for her,” said Carly Cooperman, a Democratic pollster who is CEO of Schoen Cooperman Research.
A Gallup poll published Wednesday found the economy is the most important issue for voters going into next month’s election.
Fifty-two of respondents said candidates’ positions on the economy will be “extremely important” in who they pick, the highest number seen since the Great Recession in October 2008. And another 38 percent said the economy was “very important” to their decision.
“Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%,” Gallup reported.
The Gallup survey of 1,023 registered voters was conducted from Sept. 16-28 with a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.
Trump addressed the issue of inflation while speaking to the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday.
“Four years ago when I left office we had no inflation —and we had…virtually no inflation during my entire four years… Under Biden and Harris, because of inflation, the economy has been a total disaster, but Kamala says she can’t think of one thing that she would do differently,” he said.
“And there are many people saying, in particular highly respected analyst like Scott Bessent, one of the top analysts on Wall Street, that the only reason that the stock market has gone up is because Donald Trump is doing very well in the polls and it looks like he is going to win,” Trump continued.
“The only way to end this suffering is to vote for change this November,” he said.
The inflation rate when Trump left office in January 2021 was 1.4 percent.
The rate hit 4.2 percent in April of that year and continued rise over the next year after Democrats passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021, which economists from both the left and right predicted would be highly inflationary with the economy already well on its way to recovery.
Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to get the bill through, which had no Republican support.
