Translated from the original Spanish article. Read in Spanish
News published on October 30, 2026. The situation may have changed since then.
Prices keep rising in the United States. The PCE index, the one the Federal Reserve watches most closely, showed inflation of 3.6% in September. In August it was 3.4%.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released it on Thursday, October 29, 2026.
The numbers
- In a single month, prices rose 0.5%. - Core inflation, which leaves out food and energy, reached 3.1%. - The Fed's target is 2%. Overall inflation is 1.6 points above it.
Gasoline is a big part of the blame: in the other price index, the CPI, it rose 9.1% in September alone.
Households, more squeezed
People's incomes rose 0.2%, less than prices. That is why real income, what you can actually buy, fell 0.3%.
And savings dropped to 3.8% of income, the lowest level since October 2022.
Americans spent about 113.1 billion dollars more in September than in August, but bought the same amount: it all went to higher prices.
Will rates go up?
The data came one day after the Fed kept interest rates between 3.75% and 4%. Two members voted to raise them.
According to CME data, the market sees a probability of about 75% of a hike in December. The next meeting is on December 8 and 9.
That possibility hit gold, which on Friday briefly fell below 4,000 dollars an ounce, and bitcoin, which dropped below 77,000 dollars.
All this comes four days before the elections on November 3, with the economy as a major concern for voters.
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Sources (in Spanish)
- Datos de inflación, ingresos, ahorro, gasolina y Reserva Federal: StockTitan (29 de octubre de 2026), con datos de la Oficina de Análisis Económico.
- Oro, bitcoin y probabilidad de subida de tasas: TradingKey (30 de octubre de 2026).
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses; the author and license are shown under each image.
