NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. consumer prices rose in January, the government said Friday, beating Wall Street forecasts, as energy prices rose more than expected.

The Labor Department reported that the consumer price index (CPI), a broad measure of prices paid by consumers, rose 0.5 percent after rising 0.2 percent in December. Economists, on average, expected CPI to rise 0.3 percent, according to Briefing.com.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the so-called "core" CPI rose 0.2 percent after rising 0.1 percent in December. Economists expected core CPI to rise 0.1 percent, according to Briefing.com.

YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Inflation Economy or Create your own Manage alerts | What is this?

"I do not view the upside surprise as being terribly significant," said Steve Stanley, an economist with RBS Greenwich Capital Markets. "There were very few areas of concern within the core."

The report briefly pushed U.S. stock market futures slightly lower, but they later recovered, pointing to a positive open. Treasury bond prices fell.

Energy prices jumped 4.7 percent, the Labor Department said, the biggest gain since March 2003. Energy prices rose just 0.3 percent in December.

Transportation costs posted the second-biggest gain in the report, up 1.7 percent, driven by an 8.1-percent gain in gasoline prices, the highest since February 2003.

Otherwise, core inflation was still relatively tame. In the past 12 months, the core rate has risen just 1.1 percent, matching the lowest level since 1966.

With other measures of core inflation low for the past several months -- and expected to remain low in the near future -- the Federal Reserve has said it can be "patient" in moving its target for a key overnight lending rate up from its current level, the lowest in more than 40 years.

In a speech on Friday, St. Louis Fed President William Poole, a voting member of the Fed's policy making committee, said he expected strong economic growth and "significant" job growth this year, but that inflation should stay as tame as it was in 2003.

"I see no reason why we should not see a similarly benign inflation outcome this year," Poole said.