The Economy

U.S. Inflation Measure Rises Half Point

Aug. 16, 2005

Led by rising energy prices, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key measure of U.S. inflation, rose half a percentage point on a seasonally adjusted basis in July, the U.S. Labor Department reported on August 16. Last month's increase was a sharp contrast ...

John McClenahen

Energy costs increased sharply in July, with prices overall rising 3.8% in July after declining half a percentage point in June. Prices for petroleum-based energy advanced at an even faster rate of 6.1% in July and accounted for more than half of the increase in the overall CPI, the Labor Department said.

Reassuring, however, was July's performance of the so-called core CPI, an inflation measure that subtracts the often-volatile month-to-month prices changes in food and fuel from the overall CPI. It rose just one-tenth of a percentage point in July, for the third consecutive month. The core CPI's biggest month-to-month gain was back in March, when it rose four-tenths of a percentage point.

Separately, the Labor Department reported that average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, decreased by two-tenths of a percent in July in the private, non-farm sector of the U.S. economy. A four-tenths percent increase in average hourly earnings was more than offset by a six-tenths percent increase in the CPI for urban wage earners and clerical workers. The average number of weekly hours was unchanged from June to July. In manufacturing, average weekly earnings were $656.30 in July compared with $669.06 in June.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.