By Jeffry Bartash
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. wholesale prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in January, spurred by higher costs of pharmaceutical drugs, light trucks and appliances, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted a 0.5% increase, largely because of rising gasoline prices. Yet a 2% increase in wholesale gasoline prices was more than offset by a drop in the cost of electricity and home-heating fuels, a result of unseasonably warm winter weather. Overall energy costs fell 0.5% in January. The wholesale cost of food, meanwhile, fell 0.3%, primarily because of lower prices for fresh and dry vegetables. Minus those two categories, so-called core wholesale prices rose a surprisingly sharp 0.4% - double the MarketWatch forecast for a 0.2% increase. Over the past year wholesale prices have risen an unadjusted 4.1%, the lowest year-over-year increase since January 2011.
