As a presidential race profoundly shaped by Americans’ frustration with high prices nears its end, the government said Thursday that an inflation gauge closely watched by the Federal Reserve has dropped to near pre-pandemic levels.

The Commerce Department reported that prices rose just 2.1% in September from a year earlier, down from a 2.3% rise in August. That is barely above the Fed’s 2% inflation target and in line with readings in 2018, well before prices began surging after the pandemic recession.

Yet some signs of inflation pressures remained. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core prices rose 2.7% in September from a year earlier for the third straight month. On a monthly basis, core prices rose 0.3% from August to September, up from 0.2% from July to August. The increase in the core rate is higher than the Fed would prefer.

Still, for the past six months, core inflation has declined to a 2.3% annual rate, down from 2.5% in August. And economists still expect the Fed to cut its key rate by a quarter-point when it meets next week.

The Fed tends to favor the inflation gauge that the government issued Thursday — the personal consumption expenditures price index — over the better-known consumer price index. The PCE index tries to account for changes in how people shop when inflation jumps.

A separate measure of worker pay that the government issued Thursday — the employment cost index — showed that wages and benefits grew just 0.8% in the July-September quarter, the slowest such pace in three years. Measured from the same quarter a year earlier, workers’ paychecks, excluding government employees, rose 3.8%.

Though faster wage growth provides a boost for workers, it can also fuel inflation if companies pass on their higher labor costs to consumers by raising prices.

Taken as a whole, the latest signs of a sustained cooling of inflation arrive five days before an election in which many voters have soured on the economy.

Thursday’s report also showed that Americans remain confident enough in their finances to keep shopping: Spending jumped 0.5% from August to September, which helped the economy expand at a healthy clip in the July-September quarter.

Incomes rose more slowly last month, the government said, rising just 0.3%. In response, Americans cut back on their savings, leaving the savings rate at 4.6%, down from 4.8% the previous month.

On a monthly basis, prices inched up 0.2% from August to September, up slightly from a 0.1% increase from July to August.

— Associated Press

Securian cuts 58 jobs companywide

St. Paul-based Securian Financial has notified 58 employees — approximately 2% of its total workforce — that their roles with the company are being eliminated in favor of cost-cutting.

Not including subsidiaries, the life insurance and financial services company maintains about 2,721 employees companywide, with 2,371 of them based in downtown St. Paul as of September. The 58 impacted employees represent a broad cross section of the company, which has offices throughout the U.S. and Canada, and are not all in St. Paul, said Jeff Bakken, a company spokesperson.

“This was a difficult decision impacting people we care for significantly,” Bakken said. “We will go above and beyond to ensure they are supported — with impacted individuals remaining employed with the company for several months and eligible for a financial support package.”

Bakken said the privately-held company’s business strategy is “generating positive results” but a workforce reduction and other actions to reduce expenses “are necessary to position the company for long-term success.”

Next Boeing strike vote set for Monday

The union representing striking Boeing factory workers says members will vote Monday on a new contract offer from the company that provides slightly bigger wage increases than an offer that was rejected last week.

Boeing’s latest offer would raise wages 38% over four years, or a compounded increase of about 43%, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said Thursday.

About 33,000 IAM members have been on strike for seven weeks, shutting down production of most Boeing airline jets including the company’s best-seller, the 737 Max.

OpenAI takes on Google in AI space

OpenAI is launching a ChatGPT-powered search engine that could put the artificial intelligence company in direct competition with Google and affect the flow of internet traffic seeking news, sports scores and other timely information.

San Francisco-based OpenAI said Thursday it is releasing a search feature to paid users of ChatGPT but will eventually expand it to all ChatGPT users. It released a preview version in July to a small group of users and publishers.

The original version of ChatGPT, released in 2022, was trained on huge troves of online texts but couldn’t respond to questions about up-to-date events not in its training data.

Google upended its search engine in May with AI-generated written summaries now frequently appearing at the top of search results.

Amazon reports profit of $15B, sales of $159B

Amazon reported a boost in its quarterly profits Thursday and exceeded revenue estimates, sending the company’s stock up in after-hours trading.

For the three months that ended on Sept. 30, the Seattle-based tech giant posted a revenue of $158.9 billion, higher than the $157.28 billion analysts had expected.

Amazon said it earned $15.3 billion, higher than the $12.21 billion industry analysts surveyed by FactSet had anticipated. Amazon earned $9.9 billion during the same period last year. Earnings per share were $1.43, higher than analysts’ expectations of $1.14.

Net sales increased 11% compared with the third quarter of 2023, Amazon said.

Regulatory fines eat into Apple’s profits

Over the past month, Apple blanketed television with commercials about how its newest iPhone had exciting artificial intelligence capabilities even though the company was still working on many of the features it was pitching.

But Apple’s delay with AI didn’t cut into profits. Regulators did.

On Monday, the tech giant said sales of iPhones, iPads and subscription services such as Apple Music had helped the company increase its quarterly revenue by 6% to $94.93 billion during the three months that ended in September.

The increased revenue didn’t translate into profit gains because Apple, which lost a court case in September, was forced to pay the European Union $14.4 billion in unpaid taxes. The one-time payment reduced its quarterly profit by 36% to $14.74 billion.

The results exceeded Wall Street analysts’ expectations for $94.58 billion in sales and, excluding the one-time tax payment, would have topped projections for $24.49 billion in profit. The company said it expected revenue to increase in the current quarter, which ends in December. Shares fell 2% in after-hours trading.

— From staff and news services