A report due out Friday morning will be the last piece of the inflation puzzle the Federal Reserve will get before making its decision on interest rates next week.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the August consumer price index report at 8:30 a.m.
If the Dow Jones consensus is correct, the report will show that costs for all measured goods and services rose 0.4% last month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.4%. However, excluding food and energy prices, the respective outlooks for core inflation are 0.2% and 2.4%.
Combined with Thursday's producer price index data — a measure of wholesale inflation — the CPI will help tell Fed officials what their primary inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, will show when it is released at the end of September.
The information also is expected to figure heavily into the Federal Open Market Committee's interest rate call next Wednesday, with a percentage point either way possibly meaning the difference between a hold and a hike.