US Import and Export Price Indexes - June 2025

Thank you, Robin. And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on the important topic of housing and how housing fits in with the broader economy. First, I want to step back and say that housing—our homes—has a central role in our lives beyond what statistical reports capture. Housing matters greatly for our welfare because shelter is a basic human necessity. Our homes—be it city apartments, farmhouses passed through generations, or suburban dwellings—are among the most significant places in our lives. In terms of household finances, housing is an important source of wealth for many American families. Housing also supports access to good jobs, because the jobs people can take depend on where they live and how far they need to commute. In addition, the housing sector matters a great deal to the economy as a whole, and it is an important channel through which monetary policy is transmitted. That is why I study it closely as a member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). From the perspective of the labor market, many workers have ties to housing-related sectors, including construction, real estate, and the mortgage finance industry. And because housing is a large fraction of household wealth, the housing market influences consumer spending. From the price-stability perspective, shelter has a large weight in measures of inflation. Specifically, shelter is currently 16 percent of the expenditures in the basket used to calculate the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which is the FOMC's preferred inflation measure. Today I will discuss several aspects of housing affordability in the U.S., a topic that I know is important to many of you, as it is to me. When studying affordability, it is important to distinguish between the cost of shelter, by which I mean the cost of occupying a home, and the costs of purchasing and owning a home. I will discuss each of these in turn, with the common theme being that both are elevated from a historical perspective. Next, I will discuss some supply and demand factors that explain how we got to this point and offer some tho Fed’s Kugler Says It’s Suitable To Keep Interest Rates Stable "For Some Time" Due To Low Unemployment And Rising Prices From Tariffs Fed's Kugler: Many reasons to expect larger tariff impact coming Fed's Kugler: A restrictive policy stance is important right now to keep inflation expectations anchored. Fed's Kugler: CPI shows inflation broadening across core goods.