NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. wholesale prices rose a bit in July, the government said Friday, though inflation likely remained a distant threat to the world's largest economy.

The Labor Department said its producer price index (PPI), a measure of wholesale prices, rose 0.1 percent following a 0.5 percent gain in June.

The so-called core PPI, which excludes often volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.2 percent after falling 0.1 percent in June. Economists, on average, expected both PPI and core PPI to rise 0.1 percent, according to a Reuters poll.

Separately, the Labor Department said new weekly claims for unemployment benefits rose a bit last week, staying below the benchmark 400,000 level, but very close to it.

U.S. stock market futures had little reaction to the reports, continuing to trade higher and pointing to a positive opening on Wall Street. Treasury bond prices fell.

Policy makers and economists have paid close attention to prices lately, concerned by a dramatic slowdown in the pace of inflation. After battling high inflation for decades, the Federal Reserve now says it's worried that disinflation could set the stage for deflation, an unstoppable drop in prices that hurts corporate profits and weakens the economy.

Though Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economists have said the threat of deflation, which has crippled the Japanese economy for several years, is remote in the United States, central bankers have promised to keep interest rates low for longer than usual, to make sure prices don't keep falling.

In the Labor Department report, energy prices rose 0.3 percent, following June's 3.4 percent gain. A 3.6-percent jump in the price of gasoline, along with a 1.7-percent gain in fuel oil prices, led the upswing.

Greenspan has warned about the possible economic impact of rising commercial natural gas prices. They rose just 0.8 percent in July, but have jumped 35.4 percent from a year ago.

Passenger car prices rose 0.4 percent, while light truck prices rose 0.5 percent.

Food prices, on the other hand, fell 0.2 percent, the first decline since a 0.4 percent drop in September 2002.