WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that consumer price index data for January showed progress in the fight against inflation despite a surge in the cost of shelter that pushed up the index more than was forecast by economists.

Yellen, in prepared remarks for an event at a Pittsburgh hospital, focused on the year-on-year CPI inflation figure of 3.1%, not the surprise 0.3% month-on-month surge in January.

“This morning’s CPI report showed that, in January, the headline consumer price index fell to 3.1 percent. That’s six percentage points below its peak in June of 2022,” she said. “At the same time, the recession that many forecasters predicted we would need, to see inflation come down, hasn’t materialized.”

Yellen said the Biden administration had made “significant progress in our fight to bring down inflation,” with the prices of key household expenditures like gasoline, eggs and airline fares coming in lower.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Paul Simao)