July 19, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Consumer prices rise 0.5 percent in June

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.5 percent in June after increasing 0.1 percent in May. For the 12-month period ended in June, the CPI-U increased 3.7 percent.

[Chart data—TXT]

The energy index, which declined 1.9 percent in May, increased 5.6 percent in June, accounting for three-fourths of the overall CPI-U advance. The index for petroleum-based energy rose 8.1 percent, and the index for energy services increased 2.9 percent. The food index, which advanced 0.5 percent in May, increased 0.1 percent in June. Excluding food and energy, the CPI-U rose 0.2 percent in June, the same as in both April and May.

Consumer prices rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.6 percent in the second quarter after advancing at a 6.1 percent rate in the first three months of 2000. This brings the year-to-date annual rate to 4.3 percent and compares with an increase of 2.7 percent for all of 1999.

These data are a product of the BLS Consumer Price Index program.