Food, Fuel Lead Rise in Prices : 0.6% November Jump Biggest in Nearly 2 Years

Sharply higher food and fuel costs sent consumer prices up 0.6% in November, the biggest jump in nearly two years, the government said today.

The Labor Department’s consumer price index had risen just 0.2% a month from May to September before inching up 0.3% in October.

The last time retail prices rose at November’s pace was January, 1984. The last time they rose at a steeper rate was April, 1983, when there was a 0.7% increase.

But even with the advance reported today, retail prices have risen at an annual rate of only 3.6% so far in 1985.

If that rate holds through December, it would be the slowest full-year pace since 1972, when consumer prices rose 3.4%. Retail prices rose 4% in 1984.

(In Los Angeles County, inflation fell 0.3% in November, the largest one-month decline in three years. Most of the decrease was credited to a seasonal return to lower winter residential gas rates.)

Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the November spurt in inflation on the national level because it was attributed mostly to temporary factors driving up beef and gasoline prices.

The more stable, underlying factors continued to move along at the modest pace that has inflation running at its slowest rate in 13 years.

Overall food costs were up 0.7% last month, largely because of a 2.3% surge in meat and poultry prices. The fuel component also was up 0.7%, mostly because of a 1.4% jump in gasoline prices.

Cash-strapped farmers sold off more cattle than would normally be the case earlier this year and then scaled back in recent months, resulting in temporarily short supplies of beef.