Inflation is still trending down, but from Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Beneshore and for David Brancaccio.

Yearly price increases were a little less sharp in November than in October, 3.1% versus 3.2%. But month to month things don't look as good. After being flat in October, prices ticked up a tenth of a percent in November.

Core inflation, where you take out food and energy, also rose.

So what do we make of that?

Jeffrey Cleveland, chief economist at Paiden and Regal.

Inflation is not as worrisome as it was last summer or fall.

However, we tend to look at core CPI, so X food and energy.

The month-a-month change came in at 0.3, so it picked up a bit from October.

I think on a year on year basis, inflation is hanging out around 4%.

Again, not as bad as last summer, but 4% is quite a bit higher than the Fed's 2% target.

And some of the signs point to that it's going to be slow to get back to 2%.

Yeah, it looks like indeed prices are kind of settling in around 3 or 4%

inflation.

How do we get that last mile of inflation reduction?

It might just take more time for things to settle down.

The Federal Reserve might have to hold rates where they are above 5% for longer than the

market currently anticipates.

Jeffrey Cleveland, Chief Economist at Pated in Regal.

Small businesses employ almost half of all workers in the private sector in the U.S.

The people who run these businesses are

becoming a little more pessimistic. The National Federation of Independent Businesses

Small Business Optimism Index, inched down in November. It's now been in negative territory compared to the historical average for almost two years

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