WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation surged in June and workers’ average wages accelerated in the spring — signs that Americans won’t likely feel any relief from rising prices anytime soon and that the Federal Reserve will feel compelled to further raise borrowing costs.

An inflation gauge closely tracked by the Fed jumped 6.8% in June from a year ago, the government said Friday, the biggest such jump in four decades. Much of the increase was driven by energy and food.

On a month-to-month basis, too, prices surged 1% in June, the biggest such rise since 2005. Even excluding the volatile food and energy categories, prices climbed 0.6% from May to June.

Employees’ wages, excluding government workers, jumped 1.6% in the April-June quarter, matching a record high reached last fall. Higher wages tend to fuel inflation if companies pass their higher labor costs on to their customers, as they often do.

Friday’s figures underscored the persistence of the inflation that is eroding Americans’ purchasing power, dimming their confidence in the economy and threatening Democrats in Congress in the run-up to the November midterm elections.

Some signs indicate that certain categories of inflation may moderate in the coming months, though not by very much: Gas prices have fallen since mid-June from an average national peak of $5 to $4.26, according to AAA. Likewise, other commodity prices, for items such as wheat and copper, have plunged.

But more persistent drivers of inflation show little, if any, evidence of slowing. The wage data released Friday — a measure known as the employment cost