The Bureau of Labor Statistics released February's Consumer Price Index (CPI) Tuesday morning, revealing hotter-than-expected numbers. CPI for February came in at 3.2% year over year, versus an expected 3.1%. The print revealed how various parts of the economy were impacted, including shelter, food, and energy. Shelter inflation, in particular, remains sticky, recording a 5.7% jump year over year.

Yahoo Finance's Dani Romero, Brooke DiPalma, and Josh Schafer join the Live show to break down the Consumer Price Index reading by category.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Well, February's inflation print coming in slightly hotter than expected. We are in a deep dive into three parts of the report that have been hit by sticky inflation-- shelter, food, and energy.

We've got team coverage for you to break it all down. "Yahoo Finance's" Dani Romero, Brooke DiPalma, and Josh Schafer standing by. Dani, let's start with you. You are watching shelter. Obviously, a huge contributor here to the uptick that we saw last month.

DANI ROMERO: Seana, shelter inflation remains sticky. And the shelter results really weren't a surprise. On a yearly basis, shelter came in at 5.7%. This was expected by some economists that I interviewed. They were expecting a 5.8% range.

On a monthly basis, shelter posted a 0.4% gain. Remember, housing, like you said, makes up a third of the CPI basket. There are two components, though, that have the biggest weight in this shelter figure. That's owners equivalent rent, OER, the hypothetical rent that you would earn if you rented out your property, and rent, which lags real-time data.

OER came in at 0.4% last month. This was expected. And to give you some perspective, OER, this measure has stayed in range between 0.4% to 0.6% per month since March last year.

The rent figure came in at 0.5% gain. What is this all really mean? It means that rental demand remains strong due to those affordability challenges that are happening within the housing market. And also, single family supply is still going to be a major headwind for this area.

But Brooke, you're watching food as consumers continue to really grapple with those high grocery prices.

BROOKE DIPALMA: Good morning, Dani. That's right. Well, some good news here on the food inflation front. It is flat month-over-month. And that's compared to a 0.4% jump month-over-month in the previous CPI report. So that is good news.

But compared to a year ago, food inflation is still higher. Moving higher up 2.2%. And really what we're seeing here, at large, is the increase in the cost to dine out at restaurants, at bars is outpacing the cost to cook at home. And this typically does happen when labor inflation runs ahead of commodity inflation, making restaurant prices outpace the prices of groceries.

But the cost of dining out is up 4.5% year-over-year, up 0.1%. So flattening out a bit in the cost to dine out month-over-month. But the cost of groceries up 1% year-over-year. And once again, the cost of groceries flat as well year-over-year.

Now, prices did come down in specific foods, like pork chops, chicken, fish, seafood, and eggs-- the one that we definitely watched a year ago today-- as well as fruits and vegetables.

But we did see jumps month-over-month when it comes to breakfast cereal, beef, and veal, sugar, and sweets, and snacks. They were up 1.6% year-over-year. But we did see them drop slightly last month, down 0.7%.

Now, this does come five days after President Joe Biden did call on corporations to pass along savings to consumers by bringing down prices. He also said, they're cracking down on corporate rip offs, including junk fees, and price gouging, and shrinking packages, what many call shrinkflation.

But some analysts that I spoke to did tell me that moderating inflation this flat month-- flat month-over-month inflation that we're seeing for food doesn't likely result in lower prices in the grocery store. Rather, what we might see here is these consumer staple companies take that profit, take that extra money that they're making and reinvest it in the company. So lots to watch out at the CPI report.

Josh, I know that you're watching energy, where we see prices ease earlier this winter. What did you see in this report?

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, Brooke. So energy prices ticking higher in the month of February. Energy, overall, increasing 2.3%. And then when you take a look at gasoline, that increased 3.8%.

But this energy number pretty big here in the overall report. As Seana had mentioned a few minutes ago, energy and rent being big contributors to why we saw hotter than expected inflation overall in the month of February.

Always important to note with energy that, of course, we often talk about core inflation, which excludes energy. But when we think about energy, overall, we're often talking about gas prices, which is something that have ticked up a little bit recently. And we've seen the price of crude oil go up about 10% now this year.

So the spike in energy is something that strategists that are worried about the concept of stagflation. Inflation could stay sticky as we have higher than expected economic growth. An increase in energy is something that has been flagged.

Now, today is only one report. But we'll be keeping an eye on this trend to see if energy remains sticky, and, overall, if commodities remain sticky. And we see those prices increase, as that had been a sign of sticky inflation in the past, when we had once thought it was coming down, it ends up being sticky. You often see these prices increase, again, in commodities, guys.