The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that consumer prices in October rose 2.6% from a year earlier. That marks a pickup in the pace of inflation from September, when prices were up 2.4% on the year.

Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the Federal Reserve will likely cut its key interest rate slowly and deliberately in the coming months, in part because inflation has shown signs of persistence and the Fed's officials want to see where it heads next.

October's Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes in the cost of consumer goods and services, showed that annual inflation rose by 2.6%. That's not an alarmingly high rate of inflation. It's also only a modest uptick from September's CPI reading, which measured annual inflation at 2.4%.