Here’s the inflation breakdown for April 2023 — in one chart

cnbc.com:

Inflation in April notched its lowest reading in two years, as price pressures for consumers continue to moderate from multi-decade highs and costs for household staples appear to be in retreat.

The consumer price index, a key barometer of inflation, increased 4.9% in April versus a year ago — the smallest annual reading since April 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday.

The index also fell from 5% in March, marking the 10th consecutive month of declines.

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«Increasingly, we can be confident that inflation is coming back in» to target, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics.

Inflation measures how quickly prices are changing across the U.S. economy. The CPI measures anything from fruit and vegetable prices to those for a haircut or concert ticket.

Since the CPI reading was a positive number in April, it means consumers didn't see prices falling, in a broad sense. But it shows that the rate at which they're rising has slowed significantly from the 9.1% peak in June 2022.

Policymakers aim to keep inflation at about 2% a year. It may take another year or so to reach that target, but «we're definitively headed in that direction,» Zandi said.

Consumers saw average prices decline outright in April in certain categories.

Grocery prices, for example, retreated by 0.2% during the month, following a 0.3% decrease in March — a trend that should continue as supply chains continue to normalize, as do costs for labor and diesel (a key input for transportation from farm to shelf), economists said.

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