Wall Street firms predict inflation closer to 3% than 2%, a rising unemployment rate, and a 30% chance of an economic downturn.

The year-over-year CPI was 2.5%, the lowest in nearly five years.

After minuscule job growth last year, companies hired more workers last month than in any month since July.

The PPI increased 0.5%, the most since September, after a revised 0.4% increase in December.

Over all of 2025, the economy expanded by 2.2 percent.

At the same time, revisions to last year's data show that job gains averaged just 15,000 a month last year, down from the initially reported pace of 49,000.

In December, the PPI rose the most in three months, while an underlying gauge that strips out food and energy jumped at one of the fastest rates of 2025.

Most of the decline in services prices is attributable to a 3.9% drop in margins for machinery and vehicle wholesaling, while finished consumer goods excluding food and energy rose at the fastest pace since February.