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U.S. consumer prices rose 0.5% in September, the largest increase in eight months. The result reflects another big jump in energy prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which shut Gulf Coast refineries and caused gasoline prices to jump across the country.

The September increase in the closely watched consumer price index was the biggest one-month gain since a 0.6% rise in January, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Energy prices shot up 6.1%, led by a 13.1% surge in gasoline. Analysts believe that the impact of the hurricane will be temporary.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy, rose a tiny 0.1% in September.

Over the last year, overall prices are up 2.2%, while core inflation has risen 1.7%.

Companies have grown more reluctant to borrow after an initial surge of optimism following the election, said Jeff Glenzer, vice president at the Association for Financial Professionals, a group for corporate finance and treasury professionals. “All the turmoil and the inability to move policy through Washington set in,” he said.

But analysts say the prolonged slowdown in commercial-loan growth may simply be a function of the metric returning to its normal level in recent decades. Growth in the category ran far above gross domestic product growth in the years following the financial crisis, a streak that is difficult to maintain for any prolonged period.

U.S. factory activity surged to a more than 13-year high in September amid strong gains in new orders and raw material prices, pointing to underlying strength in the economy even as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are expected to dent growth in the third quarter.

The economic outlook was also bolstered by other data on Monday showing a rebound in construction spending in August. The acceleration in manufacturing activity and the accompanying increase in prices could harden expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity surged to a reading of 60.8 last month, the highest reading since May 2004, from 58.8 in August.

U.S. economic output grew at a 3.1% annual rate in the second quarter, slightly stronger than previously thought and marking the best growth in two years.

The estimate, based on revised data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, replaces a previous tally of 3% growth. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected the estimate to remain 3%.

San Francisco’s epidemic of car burglaries may be spreading even faster than the already alarming 28 percent increase reported by police this year.

Statistics obtained from the city’s 911 center show it received 25,031 calls about auto break-ins during the first six months of 2017 — 7,061 more than the 17,970 reported by police.

The difference is that car-burglary victims’ first reaction is often to call 911 — but they don’t always follow through by filing an online report, and the cops don’t send anyone to the scene unless a smash-and-grab is in progress.

The technology hub of San Francisco surpassed the nation’s capital last year as the highest-earning large U.S. metropolitan area. Median household income in the San Francisco metro area in 2016 was $96,667, just ahead of the $95,843 figure for the Washington region, the Census Bureau announced Thursday. That put the California hotspot in first place among the 25 most populous metro areas, with the capital falling to the No. 2 slot. The median income for the San Francisco area, including nearby cities such as Oakland and Berkeley, has surged in recent years amid a tech-sector boom and jumped 9.2% in 2016. Incomes in the Washington area, including parts of Maryland and northern Virginia, rose a more modest 2.7% from 2015.

The U.S. economy expanded at its most robust pace in more than two years in the spring and appears to have momentum going into the second half of the year, supported by solid consumer spending and a pickup in business investment.

Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That was the strongest quarter in more than two years and some forecasters expect growth will remain around that pace in the third quarter.

The President has vowed to get economic growth back above 3% after the dreary slow recovery of the Obama “new normal.” What’s as sweet as the faster growth last quarter is the way it was achieved—with less spending by state and local governments but more consumer spending and rising business investment.

This last part is especially important. Lackluster business investment was a hallmark of the Obama era. And who could blame executives for being reluctant to pull the trigger on new plants and equipment? It was impossible to know what new intervention in the private economy regulators were dreaming up in Washington. When businesses don’t invest in new tools, workers have a hard time becoming more productive, which in turn means workers can’t demand higher pay.

U.S. worker productivity picked up modestly in the second quarter but showed little sign of breaking out of the sluggish trend that has prevailed for more than a decade, holding back economic growth and living standards. The lethargic pace of productivity growth seen in recent years could have a critical effect on the future trajectory of wages, prices, overall economic output and government budget balances. . . . “If labor productivity grows an average of 2% per year, average living standards for our children’s generation will be twice what we experienced,” Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said in a July speech. “If labor productivity grows an average of 1% per year, the difference is dramatic: Living standards will take two generations to double.”

Employers across the U.S. had a record 6.2 million job openings posted at the end of June, a sign that employers are hungry for new workers. The number of job openings climbed by 417,000 in June for private employers and by 44,000 for government postings, which include state and local government, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as Jolts.

The U.S. entered the ninth year of economic expansion on a familiar path of steady but unspectacular growth, with few obvious indications it is near exhausting itself. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., rose at a 2.6% annual rate in the April to June period, the Commerce Department said Friday. Figures are adjusted for inflation and seasonality.

The strongest reading on U.S. factory activity in nearly three years signaled underlying health in the economy headed into the second half of 2017. The Institute for Supply Management on Monday said its index of U.S. manufacturing activity rose to 57.8 in June, its highest level since August 2014. A number above 50 indicates expansion; economists had expected a more modest rise from May’s 54.9.

For the second year in a row, the number of babies delivered in the U.S. fell in 2016, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For some groups of women, the birth rate reached record lows.

The U.S. economic expansion remains on track as it prepares to enter its ninth year. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S. economy, expanded at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 1.4% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

When it comes to personal income growth, Californians matched the national average of 1.0 percent for the first quarter of the year, according to a new report released Tuesday by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. The national rate is up from 0.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to the BEA’s estimates. But for California, it’s been a barely measurable increase from the 0.9 percent growth rate of the previous quarter. Overall, California ranks 29th among the state and the District of Columbia for personal income growth in the first quarter of 2017, based on the BEA’s data.