Consumer prices nationwide are 3.1% higher than they were one year ago, a figure that sent stocks tumbling, but those costs have not climbed quite as fast over the same time in the Greater Boston area, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday.

The “Boston-Cambridge-Newton” region (which includes Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts as well as Rockingham and Strafford counties in New Hampshire) saw just a 2% increase in the Consumer Price Index from January 2023 to January 2024, BLS said. Food prices in the region were up 4.7% on the year while energy prices fell 13.8%. Excluding both food and energy prices, the CPI increased 3% locally over the year.

Nationally, inflation cooled last month yet remained over the Fed’s 2% target rate in the latest sign that the pandemic-fueled price surge is only gradually and fitfully coming under control.

Tuesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the consumer price index rose 0.3% from December to January, up from a 0.2% increase the previous month. Compared with a year ago, prices are up 3.1%.

That is less than the 3.4% figure in December and far below the 9.1% inflation peak in mid-2022. But the latest national reading is still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target at a time when public frustration has become a pivotal issue in President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core prices climbed 0.4% last month, up from 0.3% in December. On a year-over-year basis, core prices were up 3.9% in January, the same as in December.

Tuesday’s report showed that the drivers of inflation have decisively shifted from goods, like used cars, gasoline and groceries, which are now falling in price or rising much more slowly, to services, including hotel rooms, restaurant meals and medical care.

At his most recent news conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell singled out persistently high services prices as a concern and indicated the central bank’s policymakers would like to see services inflation ease further before starting to cut their key interest rate.

“There’s still some inflation in the system that’s going to take some time to work through,” said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights, a research firm. “This justifies the Fed wanting to wait and see how things are going to go.”

Tuesday’s unexpectedly sticky inflation data sent stock and bond prices tumbling, with financial markets now envisioning the Fed’s first cut rates in June, rather than in May or March as many traders had expected.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 524 points, or 1.4%, from its record set a day earlier. The Nasdaq composite, which has been flirting with its all-time high set in 2021, sank 1.8%.

The mixed data released Tuesday will likely reinforce the caution of Fed officials, who have said they’re pleased with the progress in sharply reducing inflation but want to see further evidence before feeling confident that it’s sustainably headed back to their 2% target. Most economists still think the Fed will start cutting its rate in June from its 22-year-high of roughly 5.4%.

Another driver of high prices has been housing costs, particularly the price of home ownership. It rose 0.6% from December to January, the biggest one-month jump since April. That measure is 6.2% higher than it was a year earlier.