Has the surge in US consumer prices accelerated further?

US inflation is expected to have hit another 40-year high in March. Consumer price index data, due out on Thursday, are forecast to have risen by 8.4 per cent year over year, according to estimates from Bloomberg, the fastest pace since 1981.  

The rate of price growth is up from 7.9 per cent in February, when the war in Ukraine was just beginning. Since then, prices of commodities have risen, with Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rising to its highest level since 2008. While oil prices have backed off since that peak, they remain elevated, pushing up consumer prices.

The measure of consumer prices that excludes the volatile food and energy sectors, so-called core CPI, is also expected to rise but at a much slower pace. Core CPI in February increased 6.4 per cent from the same month last year. The gauge is forecast to have risen 6.6 per cent in March, a fresh four-decade high, but the slowest increase in year over year growth since last summer.