Consumer Price Index: The effect of a rise in oil prices

With crude oil going back over $106/barrel (which is a 20% increase from $90/barrel), let's see how the CPI would do.

As you know, the consumer price index consists mostly of housing (42%), then second comes transportation (17%) and last comes food (15%).

The crude oil is part of the transportation segment. One third of the transportation segment is motor fuel or 5% of the CPI.

So if oil prices go up 20%, the CPI will only go up 20% x 5% = 1%. 

More importantly, housing determines a major part of the CPI.  Half of the housing segment consists of Owners’ equivalent rent of residences which is basically the amount of rent you would pay for staying in the house. This depends on the housing prices. 10% of the housing segment is fuel and utilities. So if oil goes up 20%, the housing segment will go up 10% x 20% = 2%. And the CPI would go up 2% x 40% = 1%.

CPI

So basically, if oil prices go up 20%, the CPI at least goes up 2% from the fuel in the housing and transportation segments (if all else stays equal). The other segments will of course be influenced too by rising oil prices, but to a lesser extent.

So that's the significance of the oil price on the CPI.

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Initial Jobless Claims starting to rise, S&P in for a correction

This week's initial jobless claims were rising again as reported by Zero Hedge and based on the obvious correlation between the S&P and initial jobless claims here, I expect that the S&P will come down eventually.

On top of that, the capacity utilization for the previous month was edging down (blue chart going up), which confirms that the unemployment rate will start going upwards (red chart going up).

 While deflation sets in with a lower CPI (red chart going down).

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Wage Inflation Vs. CPI

This page is created to monitor the Average Hourly Earnings of Production Vs. Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The Average Hourly Earnings (blue chart) are a good indicator for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (red chart). 

It appears that the CPI is most volatile here, so the important trend to follow is the average hourly earnings.

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Capacity Utilization Rate Vs. Consumer Price Index

This page is created to monitor the Capacity Utilization Rate Vs. Consumer Price Index (CPI).

When capacity utilization goes above 80%, the industry goes above a threshold where it lacks capacity to produce. At that moment the only way to rebalance is to increase prices.

When the capacity utilization goes above 80% (blue chart), the CPI (red chart) will follow suit after 1 year as capacity utilization is a leading indicator for inflation.

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Correlation: Wage Inflation Vs. Unemployment Rate Vs. Consumer Price Index

There is an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and the wage inflation. Whenever people get unemployed, it means the economy isn't doing well. Employers won't be able to raise wages of the people during these difficult times, so you will get a low wage inflation trend (blue line). In these periods, the unemployment rate tends to go up (yellow line).

Chart 1: Wage Inflation Vs. Unemployment Rate

The same can be said the other way round. When the unemployment rate declines, people will demand a higher salary as skilled workers get scarcer. At this stage the wages will inflate.

It is also so that wages correlate highly with the consumer price index (CPI). So if the unemployment rate declines, you can expect a higher CPI as you can see on Chart 2.

So if you don't believe the CPI the government is reporting, you just look at the average hourly earnings. The average hourly earnings were positive in March. So I expect the CPI to increase too.

Chart 2: Average Hourly Earnings Vs. CPI

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