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Businesses kept a lid on prices again last month, and wage gains were scant for most working Americans, signs consistent with an economy in the midst of a slowdown. In its monthly survey on prices for everything from cars to groceries, the Labor Department said yesterday that inflation decelerated in April. The report was in line with the Federal Reserve?s forecast that a cooling economy would eventually drag price increases down with it. A separate report from the Labor Department yesterday showed that average weekly earnings for workers in nonmanagement jobs fell 0.5 percent in April when inflation was taken into account. Compared with a year earlier, weekly earnings rose just 0.9 percent, the slowest pace in eight months.