Consumer inflation cooled more than expected in June as gas prices fell

This story about the June 2026 CPI inflation report will be updated with further details.

Inflation pulled back in June after surging in prior months due to the Iran war’s impact on energy prices throughout the economy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said on Tuesday that the consumer price index (CPI) – a broad measure of how much everyday goods like gasoline, groceries and rent cost – declined 0.4% on a monthly basis in June and was up 3.5% from a year ago. The monthly decline was the largest since a 0.8% decrease in April 2020.

Expectations vs. reality

Those figures were cooler than the estimates of economists polled by LSEG, who predicted a decline of 0.1% on a monthly basis and a 3.8% increase from a year ago. They also represent a cooling trend from the 0.5% monthly increase and the 4.2% annual rise recorded in the May edition of the report.

So-called core prices, which exclude volatile measurements of gasoline and groceries to better assess price growth trends, were unchanged from a month ago and up 2.6% from last year. Both of those figures were lower than the estimates of economists polled by LSEG, who predicted a monthly increase of 0.2% and 2.8% from a year ago.