Prices for information-processing equipment rose 13% over the year to August, but their direct contribution to overall consumer-price inflation remained limited, according to an October 15 analysis published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
The category added 0.2 percentage points to annual inflation measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index. The overall PCE index rose 3.4% over the year, so the 13% equipment-price increase should not be read as the change in all consumer prices.
Sylvain Leduc, the bank’s research director, links the equipment-price pressure to the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout. The publication presents his views with input from the bank’s forecasting staff. Firms’ demand for memory and computing chips is pushing up prices for consumer electronics such as laptops and cell phones, the analysis argues.
The equipment category had recorded negative or near-zero annual price changes for decades until last year. Its August increase was the highest since the Bureau of Economic Analysis began tracking the category in the 1960s.
Leduc’s analysis finds no indication in incoming data that those AI-related price pressures have spread to other sectors or product categories. It instead attributes most elevated PCE inflation to energy and core-goods prices linked to the Middle East conflict and higher U.S. tariffs, while noting persistent core-services inflation.
