WASHINGTON — Consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday, and a Washington Inquisitor review of the bureau’s index data shows prices are now 6.9% higher than they were two years earlier, with gasoline up 35% nationally and household electricity up 18% in the Midwest over that span.
The monthly increase, seasonally adjusted, followed a 0.6% rise in September. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose 0.3% for the third straight month, according to the BLS release. Both figures were a tenth of a point above economists’ forecasts, CNBC and Reuters reported.
White House economic officials said the report reflected the oil price shock from the war with Iran working its way through the economy. “It’s not a good number,” Chris Phelan, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told Bloomberg TV, according to NBC News. “I think that’s what we’re seeing is higher gas and diesel prices, due to high oil prices, filtering through the economy.” Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, called it “a disappointing report,” telling Fox Business Network that “the trickle-down from the higher energy prices is definitely very palpable in the data.”
Relief at the pump has come since then, too late to show up in October’s numbers. The national average price of regular gasoline fell below $4 a gallon on Tuesday for the first time since July, and Brent crude briefly dropped below $90 a barrel after reaching $118 on Oct. 30, NBC News reported, citing AAA. Oil fell after President Trump said Monday that the war with Iran could end “fairly soon,” The Guardian reported.
Why there is no annual rate this month
The bureau did not publish a 12-month inflation rate for October because the federal government shutdown in October 2025 kept it from collecting prices that month, leaving no comparison point, CNBC reported. The annual rate in September was 3.7%.
To measure the longer trend, The Inquisitor compared October 2026 index levels with October 2024 levels, the most recent October the bureau fully collected, using the public BLS data API. The all-items index for urban consumers rose from 315.664 to 337.511 over those two years (not seasonally adjusted), an increase of 6.9%, or about 3.4% a year. Core prices rose 5.6% over the same period.
What drove October
Energy led the month. The gasoline index rose 1.0% after seasonal adjustment, following a 9.1% jump in September. The two figures can look at odds with falling pump prices: AAA’s national average fell from $4.41 a gallon on Oct. 1 to $4.18 at the end of the month, NBC News reported. Before seasonal adjustment, the bureau’s gasoline index did fall, by 0.7%. Because pump prices usually decline more in October, the bureau’s adjustment turned a smaller-than-usual decline into an increase.
Electricity rose 0.9% for the month, while piped utility gas fell 0.8%. Food rose 0.5%, with food at home up 0.4%, the largest increase since April, according to NBC News. The beef and veal index rose 1.2% in October and is 20.4% higher than two years ago. Baby food and infant formula rose 5.1%, the largest monthly increase on record for that category, NBC News reported.
Shelter, the largest component of the index, rose 0.3% and accounted for more than 30% of the overall increase, according to the BLS. Some categories eased: used cars and trucks fell 1.2%, and apparel, a category economists watch for tariff effects, rose 0.1%, CNBC reported. New vehicle prices are up just 1.6% over two years.
| Category | Sept. 2026 (monthly) | Oct. 2026 (monthly) | Two-year change |
|---|---|---|---|
| All items | +0.6% | +0.4% | +6.9% |
| Core (excluding food and energy) | +0.3% | +0.3% | +5.6% |
| Energy | +5.2% | +0.7% | +24.6% |
| Gasoline | +9.1% | +1.0% | +35.1% |
| Electricity | +0.2% | +0.9% | +9.7% |
| Utility (piped) gas | -0.3% | -0.8% | +16.0% |
| Food at home | -0.1% | +0.4% | +4.8% |
| Food away from home | +0.2% | +0.5% | +7.6% |
| Beef and veal | -0.8% | +1.2% | +20.4% |
| Shelter | +0.4% | +0.3% | +6.8% |
| Rent of primary residence | +0.2% | +0.2% | +6.1% |
| Airline fares | +1.2% | +0.4% | +23.2% |
| Hospital services | +0.6% | +0.7% | +11.8% |
| New vehicles | +0.2% | +0.2% | +1.6% |
| Used cars and trucks | +0.7% | -1.2% | +1.2% |
The regional picture
The bureau’s regional indexes, which are published without seasonal adjustment, show the Northeast and Midwest absorbing the largest increases over two years. Prices rose 7.9% in the Northeast and 7.8% in the Midwest from October 2024 to October 2026, compared with 6.0% in the South and 6.8% in the West.
Electricity is the biggest regional divide. The Midwest’s electricity index rose 18.2% over two years and the Northeast’s rose 13.7%, while the South’s rose 7.0% and the West’s 5.2%. Utility costs, including the cost of grid upgrades for data centers, are a central issue in the bipartisan permitting bill now before the Senate, The Washington Inquisitor reported Tuesday.
Gasoline rose by roughly a third everywhere, from 33.5% in the South to 37.9% in the Northeast. Grocery prices rose fastest in the West, up 6.0% over two years, and slowest in the Midwest, up 3.9%. Shelter rose most in the Midwest, up 9.2%.
In October alone, prices rose 0.5% in the Northeast and 0.3% in the Midwest and were nearly flat in the South and West, before seasonal adjustment.
| Region | All items | Gasoline | Electricity | Food at home | Shelter | Oct. 2026 monthly change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northeast | +7.9% | +37.9% | +13.7% | +5.4% | +7.9% | +0.5% |
| Midwest | +7.8% | +35.5% | +18.2% | +3.9% | +9.2% | +0.3% |
| South | +6.0% | +33.5% | +7.0% | +4.0% | +5.5% | +0.0% |
| West | +6.8% | +35.2% | +5.2% | +6.0% | +6.1% | +0.1% |
| U.S. city average | +6.9% | +35.1% | +9.7% | +4.8% | +6.8% | +0.2% |
Washington and other large metro areas
The bureau publishes an index for the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area every other month, and the next reading covers November. In the most recent one, for September, prices in the Washington area were 4.1% higher than a year earlier, above the national rate of 3.7%. The area’s gasoline index, which is published monthly, was essentially unchanged in October and was 30.4% higher than two years earlier.
In the New York area, prices rose 0.6% in October and 8.2% over two years. In the Los Angeles area, they also rose 0.6% for the month and 8.0% over two years, according to the bureau’s metro indexes.
| Area | Latest reading | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, all items | Sept. 2026 vs. Sept. 2025 | +4.1% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, gasoline | Oct. 2026 vs. Oct. 2024 | +30.4% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, all items | Oct. 2026 vs. Oct. 2024 | +8.2% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, all items | Oct. 2026 vs. Oct. 2024 | +8.0% |
| U.S. city average, all items | Oct. 2026 vs. Oct. 2024 | +6.9% |
Wages, the Fed and the next Congress
Price growth has been running ahead of pay. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, described the situation as “the worst bout of inflation relative to wage gains since the 1970s,” NBC News reported.
The report raised expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its Dec. 8-9 meeting, Reuters reported. Before the data came out, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said in a speech in London that he would support at least a quarter-point increase and that if core inflation rose 0.3% or more, “a 50 basis-point hike in the policy rate should be considered at the December meeting.” Core inflation did rise 0.3%. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan later said the Fed “needs to implement at least two more 25 basis-point rate increases,” according to NBC News. The 10-year Treasury yield neared 5%.
Prices were on voters’ minds last week. Senate Republican Leader John Thune, reelected to lead his conference in the minority on Tuesday, said of the midterm results, “If you believe the exit polls, it was the war, it was the economy, it was inflation, it was fuel prices,” according to Roll Call.
How we did this
The Washington Inquisitor pulled index levels for 50 Consumer Price Index series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics public data API on Nov. 11, 2026, including national seasonally adjusted category indexes and not-seasonally-adjusted indexes for the U.S. city average, the four Census regions and three metro areas. Percentage changes were calculated from index levels and rounded to one decimal place; small differences from BLS-published rates are due to rounding. Two-year comparisons use October 2024 because the bureau did not collect October 2025 prices. The Washington-area all-items index is published only in odd-numbered months, so the latest available annual comparison is for September. Index levels describe change over time, not the price level in one region compared with another.
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