The consumer-price report showed energy costs increased 2.1 percent from a month earlier, the most since June.
Gasoline Prices
Pump prices ticked up in December after hitting their lowest level since 2011 in November. Still, a drop in regular unleaded gasoline costs in the final quarter of 2013 may have given households more to spend on other goods and services.
Food costs rose 0.1 percent. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. is paying attention to higher food prices. Chief Financial Officer John R. Hartung said that the company has seen “inflation creep in” starting in the second half of 2012, and despite improvement in early 2013, food costs are at the higher end of their usual range.
As a result, the Denver, Colorado-based company is thinking “that 2014, not earlier than the middle of the year, that we may raise prices,” Hartung said in a Jan. 14 presentation.
Owners-equivalent rent, one of the categories designed to track housing prices, rose 0.2 percent.
Clothing prices increased 0.9 percent in December, the biggest gain since June, today’s report showed.
Drug Costs
Medical-care costs were a weak spot in the data, with commodities such as prescription drugs falling 0.8 percent last month, the biggest decrease in data going back to 1967.
Other Labor Department figures today showed the increase in total prices hurt worker pay. Hourly earnings adjusted for inflation dropped 0.3 percent in December and were up 0.2 percent over the past year.