Median short-term consumer expectations of inflation have gone up 50 basis points between February and March 2023, according to survey data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That's the first increase in inflation expectation since October 2022. But uncertainty about one-year-ahead inflation also increased.

"Median inflation expectations increased by 0.1 percentage point at the three-year-ahead horizon to 2.8%, but decreased by 0.1 percentage point at the five-year-ahead horizon to 2.5%," the report said. "The survey's measure of disagreement across respondents (the difference between the 75th and 25th percentile of inflation expectations) increased at all three horizons."

Expectations are important because of public psychology. "Inflation expectations are simply the rate at which people—consumers, businesses, investors—expect prices to rise in the future," the Brookings Institution wrote in 2022. "They matter because actual inflation depends, in part, on what we expect it to be. If everyone expects prices to rise, say, 3 percent over the next year, businesses will want to raise prices by (at least) 3 percent, and workers and their unions will want similar-sized raises. All else equal, if inflation expectations rise by one percentage point, actual inflation will tend to rise by one percentage point as well."