Wholesale inflation was slightly more modest in July than economists had expected, lowering the odds of a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase next month.

The producer price index for total final demand was unchanged in July, translating to growth of 4.7% year over year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.

That compares with the 0.1% monthly growth forecast by economists surveyed by FactSet, after the index fell 0.1% in June because of a retreat in oil prices. Compared with a year ago, economists had expected wholesale inflation to measure 4.9%, a pullback from June’s 5.5% pace.

A key factor in the softer reading was that fuel prices continued to unwind in July, with energy costs declining 3.1% month over month. In fact, more than half of the July decrease in the index for final demand goods was the result of gasoline costs falling 5.7% month over month.

Food costs were down 0.9% on the month. Overall, the index for final demand goods fell 0.7% month over month in July.

Services costs, however, rose 0.2% month over month in July. That was driven by portfolio management costs, which rose 6.5%. In contrast, prices for truck transportation of freight fell 1.8% and airfares were down 3.4%. That signals that the recent spate of higher oil prices earlier this summer haven’t led to broad-based inflationary effects.

Core PPI, which excludes food and energy, remained positive in July, rising 0.2%. But that’s still a pullback from June’s pace, which was revised higher to 0.4%. Core producer prices rose 4.2% year over year, a cooler rate than June’s 4.7%.

The BLS also reports a core PPI metric that excludes trade, which rose 0.4% in July and was up 4.7% from a year earlier.

The details of Thursday’s PPI data were mostly encouraging, writes Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Trade services, a metric that tracks the difference between selling prices and acquisition costs, fell by 0.1% month over month in July. Gross margins remain slightly lower than in the spring, Tombs noted. That likely signals that distributors are absorbing some of the energy shock, rather than passing it on fully to consumers, he wrote.

The effects of the increasing demand for the artificial-intelligence buildout, however, were evident in Thursday’s data. The costs of electronic computers and computer equipment were up 1.1% on the month in July and have risen 9.8% over the past 12 months. On the services side of things, the index for computer hardware, software, and supplies retailing jumped 11.9% month over month in July after two months of declines. Compared with a year ago, costs were up 14.2% in July.

Still, overall, most input costs beyond energy are cooling. That should reduce inflationary pressures for businesses in coming months, writes Nationwide’s senior economist Ben Ayers.

While the latest PPI data won’t completely settle the debate around the odds of a interest-rate hike in September, it should help convince policymakers that inflation is trending lower—at least for now.

Looking at the PPI components that feed into the Fed’s official inflation gauge—the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index—the decline in airfares in July helped to offset the jump in the portfolio management component.

Citi economists now estimate that core PCE will increase 0.2% month over month for July, delivering a 12-month increase of 3.2%. That said, there is a risk that core PCE inflation will remain at June’s 3.3% level.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis will release the July PCE inflation data on Aug. 26.