The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its July Consumer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. Eastern this morning and it reports that the all-items index rose 3.4% over the past year, edging down from June's 3.5% and landing almost exactly where Wall Street economists surveyed by NBC News had projected. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, cooled to 2.5% from 2.6%. Food prices overall climbed 3.0% over the year, with the grocery-store subset — what economists call "food at home" — up a milder 2.7%. USDA's Economic Research Service still projects food-at-home prices will land somewhere between 1.6% and 3.9% for full-year 2026, with restaurant prices running hotter, near 3.5%. Those averages, though, continue to mask sharp divides between individual staples — some sitting well below their pandemic-era peaks, others still setting records.
