Inflation slowed unexpectedly in November, as a deceleration across a range of consumer products outweighed price pressures in categories like gasoline — but economists said the numbers should be interpreted with caution due to spotty data collection during the government shutdown.
The consumer price index, a key inflation barometer, rose 2.7% in November from a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.
That was a slowdown from a 3% inflation rate in September, the last month of available data, and came in lower than expected.
“Inflation fell quite sharply,” said Thomas Ryan, a North American economist at Capital Economics.
″[But] I think we’re slightly suspicious of some of these numbers, to be honest,” he said. “It wasn’t a usual month.”
