Inflation unexpectedly rose to a 4.4% annual rate in April, as measured by the gauge favored by the Federal Reserve.

The rise in inflation in the personal consumption expenditures price index reported Friday morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis is an unwelcome sign that price pressures are not yet abating in the face of the Fed’s campaign to slow price gains by hiking interest rates.

Inflation is still running much hotter than the central bank’s target and damaging household purchasing power.

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Core PCE inflation, a measure of inflation that strips out energy and food prices and is generally less volatile, clocked in at a 4.7% year-over-year rate.

Other recent measures of inflation have shown that prices are continuing to fall back to Earth from the highs notched last year, which marked the country’s worst inflationary plague in decades.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced inflation fell slightly to 4.9% in the year ending in April in an update to the consumer price index, the lowest such rate since May 2021.

In addition, inflation plunged to a 2.3% annual rate in March, as measured by the producer price index — the lowest level in more than two years.

The Fed this month again hiked interest rates by a modest degree, a quarter of a percentage point, despite growing uncertainty in the banking sector following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March.

The Fed's target rate is now sitting at 5% to 5.25% — the highest it has been since the financial crisis in 2008.

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The inflation news comes a day after the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised up its estimate on for first-quarter GDP growth to a 1.3% annual rate from an estimated 1.1%.