Consumer prices are expected to have risen 0.3 percent in October, half September's pace, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its report at 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Nov. 10, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, are forecast to rise 0.2 percent, which would be the smallest increase in three months.
The nearest comparison is September. In September, the consumer price index rose 0.6 percent, the largest monthly increase since April. A 0.3 percent October reading would halve that pace within a single month, though it would still leave the Federal Reserve looking at an index that has run above its target for more than five years, as Reuters has reported.
Tuesday's release will lack one familiar figure. The bureau will not publish year-over-year changes, because it skipped the October 2025 report during the federal government shutdown at the time.
What the forecasters expect
Bloomberg Economics, in a note by Anna Wong, Troy Durie and Eliza Winger, expects a headline increase of 0.25 percent after 0.65 percent in September, and a core increase of 0.24 percent after 0.33 percent. The economists expect slower price gains for used cars and consumer electronics, and they expect owners' equivalent rent, the housing measure that spiked in September, to rise about a third less than it did that month.
Citi anticipates limited pass-through of high energy costs to goods prices and moderate services inflation, according to the Bloomberg report.
Why this report carries more weight than usual
The October figures are the last consumer price data the Fed will see before its Dec. 8–9 meeting. The central bank raised rates in September, its first increase in three years, and held them in October. After the Nov. 6 jobs report, fed funds futures priced about an 80 percent chance of a December hike, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters, and investors expect about two more quarter-point increases in this cycle in total.
The jobs report did little to argue against that pricing. Employers added 165,000 jobs in October, against the 59,000 economists polled by Dow Jones had expected, and the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent, CNBC reported.
Marvin Loh of State Street described the risk in a stronger-than-expected print. "If you get a hot number and then you start adding additional tightening because the inflationary environment looks like it's accelerating, that's just something else that investors would have to absorb," he told Reuters.
That risk arrives in a market already under strain. The Nasdaq Composite fell 3.4 percent in the week ended Nov. 6, and Thursday's one-day losses across the major indexes were the worst since April 2025, CNBC reported.
The rest of the week
Two more releases follow Tuesday's. Producer prices for October are due on Friday, Nov. 13, and are forecast to accelerate to a 6.6 percent annual increase, the steepest in nearly four years, Bloomberg reported. On Thursday, existing-home sales are expected to fall to the lowest level since 2010 as mortgage rates stay high, according to a Bloomberg forecast of the National Association of Realtors figures.
The pressure is not only American. Euro zone inflation stands at 4 percent, a three-year high, Reuters reported on Nov. 8, and traders put the odds of a European Central Bank hike in December at about 60 percent, down from 75 percent.
For the Fed, the question on Tuesday morning is narrow: whether October's monthly increase comes in near the 0.3 percent economists expect, or closer to September's 0.6 percent.