Someday we are not going to have to cover inflation all the time.

Today, however, is not that day.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Colin Rizzell.

It is Wednesday.

Today, this one is the 15th of January.

It is always to have you along, everybody.

The economic data owe the day, as you might have guessed, is of the inflation variety.

And we had today what Wall Street types call a downside surprise. That is the core consumer price index came in just a

hair lower than expected. Remember, Core strips out food and energy, which thus makes it a better

gauge of where overall prices are going. Core was up 3.2% year on year.

Among the biggest drivers of that core number and a key reason that inflation is proving

so sticky, shelter.

Rent and owner's equivalent rent, that's economist talk for the math they do to make

mortgages match rent levels in their formula.

Combined, they were 4.6% higher in December than they were a year ago.

Marketplace is Samantha Fields gets this going.

Housing is most people's biggest expense by far.

Steve Reed, a senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says that's why it weighs so

heavily in the

consumer price index. Over 36% of the whole CPI is sheltered. As long as housing costs remain

high, inflation can only go so low. Purely mathematically, it's hard to get a low headline number

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