The inflation rate for goods and services rose by only 4.9 percent in April after 5.0 percent in March, as the Department of Labor announced on Wednesday in Washington. Experts polled by the Reuters news agency had expected the figure to remain unchanged after the inflation rate fell by a full point in March.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates up from near zero to a range of 2022.5 to 00.5 percent since the beginning of 25 in a bid to curb high inflation and cool the hot labor market. Last month, it came only a small step closer to its target of an inflation rate of 2.0 percent.
At the same time, it is struggling with stubbornly high core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food prices. This fell only slightly to 5.5 percent in April from 5.6 percent in March. The influential head of New York's Federal Reserve District, John Williams, has recently not ruled out the possibility that interest rates could continue to rise - even though the Fed had recently signaled its willingness to take a possible break.