The stock market increasing is not the same thing as inflation. What you're saying makes sense only if you are referring to stock market valuation... strictly retiring because inflation is high makes no sense.
50 Cent is up 1 cent to 113 Cent.
every single day $5/gas is taking a BILLION dollars out of the economy that could have gone elsewhere
but it could be worse, we could be innocent civilian Iranians having the US bomb their water and power plants this week
If you made 100k in say 2000 the equivalent would be 200k today. If you go by median house price your salary should have doubled since 2015!
See also the +25% inflation / -1.2% net wages after inflation over five years chart here, for those unfamiliar with how inflation % press releases are misleading over time. If household spending power is -1% after +4% inflation, then that inflation probably isn’t healthy for your country’s economic future, etc.
https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...
(I also suspect the wage index itself is disguising about the total wages paid index dropping like a stone, but haven’t done the math to chart it yet myself yet.)
Oil has only really maintained the ~$100/barrel price because of record SPR releases worldwide. Also, that $100 price is kinda fake because it's a future price. The spot prices got much higher. Well, that runway is coming to an end. If the Strait of Hormuz re-opened today , we'd still be facing an energy shock. Plus there's famine coming.
Now the US won't run out of oil or refined petroleum products. The uS is now a net exporter. But it's a global marekt so the prices are going to go way up. And some countries and heavily dependent on oil for electricity. They are going to face blackouts.
So even though fertilizer shortages are skewed towards the Global South, food prices too are global so they're going up too.
In 1973, the energy shock took ~6 months to manifest [1].
But I think the real problem is dynamic pricing. Inflation is insidious. People start raising prices on the expectation of rising prices, thus causing prices to rise. But so many industries now are going well beyond that by essentially colluding through AI tools (eg RealPage) to further raise prices.
I honestly don't know how this ends without a deep, long recession.
[1]: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/oil-crises-past-and-possi...
The higher-frequency data are more concerning. CPI “increased 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in May, after rising 0.6 percent in April” and 0.9 percent in March [1]. (0.3, 0.2, 0.3 percent for December, January, February, respectively.)
So a linear trend of 6% from March, closer to 9% if one extrapolates the March-April-May quarter. Almost all of that driven by food and energy. Core spiked to 0.4% MoM in April, but calmed down to 0.2% in May, on trend with pre-war numbers. It’s up 2.9% YoY, but trending a bit lower. (Looked at another way, we’ve already “booked” 2.5% of inflation for ‘26. If we continue at 0.5% MoM, we close the year +5.6%. Even if it drops to pre-war 0.2%, we’re still going to be +3.8%. Given the resumption of hostilities, I’m betting we’ll be closer to the former.)
Together with the jobs numbers, it would be weird for an independent Fed to not raise rates.
It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU.
The Trump administration does not care about "its" population. There were already rumors early in the Trump term that Trump would not mind a recession so that his real estate cronies could buy cheap foreclosures.
So it is all a double win for the oligarchs. The stock market is still fine, nothing else matters.
That comment is unnecessary and has the effect of making people feel bad.
I think the rationale is that wages are stagnant in comparison to investments (stocks) and costs (inflation). So there's decreased incentive to focus on wages as a form of income, and more incentive to focus on investments.
I've definitely felt this personally, as my income shifts towards investments, my will to work for a wage has decreased. That shift has increased because I've accured more investments, but also because investments have grown kind of ridiculously compared to my wage.
Regardless of your skill and reputation, time off can quickly put you below the bar for even getting a call-back, and you lose access to relevant lessons.
You'll be shocked at how irrelevant you become, and how quickly the retirement accounts will give up the gains of the last 3 years (particularly when this 2026 IPO summer terminates US equity markets).
The feeling of "What's the point" might have little to do with work, and more to do with (finally) losing faith in ambition. If so, don't worry: the best comes after we put aside dreams.
Sorry to be a downer but there is no certainty on the future especially with the level of chaos being sown in the western world as a function of a few key people.
UK has very high taxation now so working full time doesn’t bring in as much as a decent portfolio.
The logical point here doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.
It feels more likely your investment account gains are driving your decisions. Stock gains are also driven by inflation though!
I can sort of understand the feeling though, I just recently got a 2.5% raise for "inflation", which hardly feels like it's making a dent.
Inflation does incentivize spending, yes. Would you rather have 100 kilos of rice today, or wait and have 99 kilos of rice tomorrow for the same price?
Unless you're maybe one of the few specialists in deep learning, CUDA, etc.
There's been mass layoffs and downward pressure on compensation all over.
It makes perfect sense if the decision to work is based on real, after-tax income. Change the comment to say "the tax rate keeps climbing so I quit working" and it would not occur to anyone to challenge it.
Once you have enough saved to generate income covering the very basics (probably somewhere around $30k/year in a LCOL area in the US) it becomes a question of whether selling a 40-hour block of your time on a weekly basis is worth it. For this individual, it is not.
Not knowing if that's good/bad, as it is without any frame of reference, so the same data for Spain looks something like this:
Prices up +3.2% in the past year, up +22.4% in the past 5 years. Compared to 1999, a 1.88× difference, and if you want to compare since when it doubled, it'd be around September 1996. This is according to a tool from INE, Spain’s national statistics: https://www.ine.es/varipc/index.do?L=1
edit: I've explained how this works in a reply below.
What jobs have the wages gone up 30% in that same time period? I’m sure a few, but not many.
Maybe you are the strawman consumer that skeptics point to in guaranteed basic income debates, who just stops working because they get a check.
Add high taxes to this and working is even less attractive when they take 50% from you. No wonder many highly qualified people decide to pass on that deal and just do the bare minimum which in OP case is nothing.
I think OP means that once their investment returns starts exceeding their wage income, their motivation for continuing to work drops.
Which, I kinda get. If you don't really like what you're doing, it's harder to stay motivated at continuing to work when your bag of money makes more money than you do.
It sounds like OP is already planning on some amount of return to work, which may be necessary because that exact point (investment returns > wage income) isn't necessarily a safe point to retire. But it might be, depending on how much you spend, and what your not-employer-funded healthcare costs are.
All inflation incentivizes is finding an asset class that isn't devaluing. If that is what you mean by "spending" then we align. But does inflation incentivize spending money on depreciating assets? Only for fools.
Not really. They may believe the inflation is driven by supply shocks, not excess demand. For example, the oil blockade. Raising already restrictive rates wont increase the supply of oil.
They don't even need to be right. If they simply believe this is what's driving inflation, they could decline to raise rates without that necessarily indicating a lack of independence.
Personally I expect the FED not to be independent and to let inflation run a little hot while lowering rates to attack the debt from 2 angles. But even still, its not true that high CPI + not lowering rates = non-independent fed
Graph it without the logarithmic scale and draw a curve through the 1982-2018 data and the recent spike will explain why people are complaining about it.
The same way Powell ended the last one without a deep, long recession.
And the trend line would bend differently if we could just learn the lesson.
All items: +0.5% monthly; +4.2% year-over-year.
Energy: +3.9% monthly; +23.5% year-over-year.
Gasoline: +7.0% monthly; +40.5% year-over-year.
Fuel oil: +58.9% year-over-year.
Electricity: +0.6% monthly; +5.9% year-over-year.
Utility natural gas: -0.5% monthly; +3.0% year-over-year.
Food overall: +0.2% monthly; +3.1% year-over-year.
Food at home / groceries: +0.1% monthly.
Food away from home / restaurants: +0.3% monthly.
Nonalcoholic beverages: +0.6% monthly.
Cereals and bakery products: +0.4% monthly.
Fruits and vegetables: +0.2% monthly.
Dairy: -0.6% monthly.
Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs: -0.2% monthly.
Core CPI / all items less food and energy: +0.2% monthly; +2.9% year-over-year.
Shelter overall: +0.3% monthly.
Rent: +0.4% monthly.
Owners’ equivalent rent: +0.3% monthly.
Lodging away from home: +0.4% monthly.
Communication: +1.3% monthly.
Airline fares: +2.7% monthly.
Personal care: +1.0% monthly.
Recreation: +0.3% monthly.
Apparel: +0.3% monthly.
Used cars and trucks: +0.1% monthly.
Medical care: +0.3% monthly.
Hospital services: +0.7% monthly.
Motor vehicle insurance: -1.7% monthly.
Household furnishings and operations: -0.6% monthly.
New vehicles: -0.3% monthly.
Prescription drugs: -0.9% monthly.
Steadily rising prices will be the norm from now on. What will be interesting to see is how fast the corporate elite figure they can boil the frogs without them noticing too much.
$50.00 hotdog is coming.
If you're at $5,000/month, a 4.2% raise puts you at $5,210. If you're spending $600/month on gas (not unreasonable for someone that drives an SUV and lives in the suburbs instead of in the urban core), you still come out behind.
In high inflation countries you often get a revision every 2-3 months and you get a rise that is higher than the official inflation, as a result this solidifies the inflation and boosts the economy as everyone immediately buys whatever they can before it becomes more expensive. It's a vicious cycle.
Most of the average joe's money is spent on housing + food + energy these things are all way above the calculated """average""" inflation
If I make 100K and get a 3% increase, that's $3000 more.
But if I only spend 30K to live, and my living expenses go up 5%, that's only a $1500 increase to my living expenses while I earned $3000 more that year. So how is that a pay cut if I actually have even more money left over that basically just goes into my investment account then.
On average, nationally. Look up your state or metropolitan-area CPI. Or better yet, track your actual expenses and project forward.
The median earner with a standard deduction would need a ~4.7% raise to stay even...
"Inflation" is also increasingly distributed unevenly. The top 10% continues to make up a larger and larger portion of spending. It is entirely possible for ~4.2% inflation to be substantially higher (or lower) for the median household than the overall reported number.
Ah…inflation.
But if you don't mind, I'll take 4.2% from your pay.
Receiving "market" compensation trumps real-world expenses, since the market for one's labor is a different market than the real-world expenses.
The problem is that is now over, and so wages are back to being suppressed again.
But if you look at the sibling comment, all of that came from "Food away from home ". In other words, it's all because of takeout/restaurants, not groceries. Those were actually dragging inflation down.
If you sat down and did the math on what it costs someone to pay rent / mortgage, car insurance, health insurance, daycare, schooling, going out to eat and drink, doing anything for entertainment, go to the grocery store.. it's not a debate that the real inflation is significantly higher all the time than what is used to measure the number.
The US national debt is about to hit $40 trillion. It was $20 trillion 9 years ago.
What Trump and Biden should've done is implemented a windfall profits tax of probably 80%. But there's absolutely zero chance of that happening by either party.
By the way, that coffee is $9. Sorry, Brazil tariffs and everything else - you understand.
A rationale for the price rarely affects my choice. If I don’t want to buy something for a price, explaining that the guy won’t be able to survive without pricing it that high won’t get me to buy it. If I do want to buy something for a price, explaining that a guy is charging a hefty profit won’t get me to not buy it.
The only thing that will get me to buy it or not buy it is if it is at the point on the price/quality frontier where I want it.
This is the problem with people treat CPI as some word from the heavens...it is not. CPI is a highly constructed figure which conveniently includes/excludes things and is really more a floor of what the inflation is. Anyone living in the real world knows experienced inflation is way higher.
I can believe the US/UK oil companies believe that.
It may even be true, because the energy transition caps the entire future opportunity for oil/gas sales, and all the producers have been trying to capture a larger share of that pie for the last 2 years or so.
But this intervention is so heavy-handed that it is visibly destroying that future market. It looks like all oil companies will lose a lot because of it, US/UK ones included.
> The Trump administration does not care about "its" population.
Yes, he's trying to govern like an oligarch. We will see in November if this was a good choice or if the US is still too democratic for this to work. Or earlier if he tries to avoid that test.
"Well, inflation since 2015 is nonexistent if you swap out steaks for 3 day old catfish and fruits for kool aid packets"
The things you are talking about are a phenomenon largely of the COVID era and later. The biggest wage gains post-COVID have been in the lowest end of the job market, and services where almost-minimum-wage labor is a high fraction of their cost have commensurately risen in price the fastest (e.g., fast food). Similarly, a lot of the easy money flowing into unprofitable grow-then-make-money businesses (like delivery firms) have stopped flowing in, so those services have had to actually make money from customers, which causes their costs to rise.
For one even in the short term this is benefiting China as its the largest renewables producer in the world and much less exposed to ME fuels than Japan and America's allies, who are to put it in plain English, fucked. (Japan gets 80-90% of its resources from the Gulf, China ~15-20%)
Secondly the only thing that wakes the American voter out of his or her perpetual stupor is the cost at the gas station, and every single person responsible for this will be voted out of office. I cannot imagine that even the oil industry wants a blue wave just because they could crank the prices for a few months
Prices are subject to the combination of the value of the currency and the value of the good. Food may be worth more than in the past, for example, so you cannot look at the value of the currency alone.
The administration's planning is much more along the lines of, Will this look cool when they announce it on Fox News tomorrow? If you think there's much beyond that, you're ascribing strategic clarity where there isn't any. They're continue to flail around and TACO until they have a result they can present to MAGA loyalists as a success, regardless of actual merits.
It's not a question of ethics. It's a question of competence.
…how? What is this agenda? Juicing short-term energy exports? That’s not a “dominance agenda.”
Yup.
If steak is tracked and it doubles in price, they can adjust the basket weights to reflect what they assume consumers will do: buy less beef and more chicken instead. So if Q1 steak=10 and Q2 steak=20 they might change the weights so that it's essential comparing Q1 steak to Q2 chicken. Which may be cheaper than Q1 steak, thus reducing inflation despite steak doubling in price.
If I invest half my income and spend half my income, and the prices of goods goes up 4.2% and my income goes up 4.2%, then I've made progress; I'm now investing more than half my income, because the half of my income I was spending has stayed even and the half I was investing has increased.
I don’t think know that inflation was worse in the 70s helps fixes the narrative that 4.2% inflation is not good.
> that coffee is $9
Lots of coffee data [1]. One I think tracks a cup in a city is up 17% YoY.
[1] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/APU0000717311&series_id=CUUR...
It’s an attempt at a central tendency in a complex economy with non-linear variability.
> Anyone living in the real world knows experienced inflation is way higher
Here is a map of wage changes across the U.S., 2024 to 2025 [1]. Lots of variance! If you’re on the West Coast, right now, you’re seeing above-CPI inflation. If you’re in the Northern Rockies, where I am, you’re seeing less.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/county-employment-and-wages/perce...
Absolutely absurd, but if you got the upswing between 2010-2020, you might be in an upper class while still living in lower class, meaning your 401k is all you need to survive on while the billionaires continue to pump the market as a defacto monetary instrument and leave the dollar for the poors.
Think of it like bitcoin, but instead of owning electronic worthless hashes, you own LLCs that own stocks and take out loans on behalf ot he LLC against those stocks.
Then you just trade those LLCs around as tokens of wealth.
Welcome to the great new oligarchy.
The national debt was added before the inflation took hold to counter the Covid recession. (When the MMT nutters were at the helm.)
Powell cured the resulting inflation without causing a recession. He did that without adding anything to our national debt.
> What Trump and Biden should've done is implemented a windfall profits tax of probably 80%
This just creates a political game of defining what is and isn't a windfall. A progressive corporate tax achieves what I think you want to without the side effects.
Either way, the playbook for getting out of this is steeply increasing rates and then moderating them before inflation hits target.
This would make you the exception. Companies are constantly increasing prices to see how much they can charge consumers before they feel cheated and stop buying and/or enough customers get priced out to hurt profits.
Consumers tend to feel ripped off if they think a price increase was due to greed but are way more forgiving if they think the price increase was needed because of something outside of a company's control. That's why companies are quick to tell consumers that rising prices are due to things like fuel prices, bird flu, or supply chain problems.
Of course, that tactic isn't as effective as it used to be since consumers have seen companies using those excuses and feed them lines like "We're all in this together!" while those same companies report skyrocketing profits and they've watched as prices remained high or even increased even after the blamed fuel prices dropped and supply chain issues resolved.
If John makes $100k and lives on $10k, then cost of living increases by 100%. I believe John should be paid $200k, and according to you his salary should go to $110k.
Transmission of material in this release is embargoed until
8:30 a.m. (ET) Wednesday, June 10, 2026 USDL-26-0824
Technical information: (202) 691-7000 * cpi_info@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cpi
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov
CONSUMER PRICE INDEX - MAY 2026
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in May, after rising 0.6 percent in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 4.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for energy rose 3.9 percent in May, after rising 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March. The energy index accounted for over sixty percent of the monthly all items increase. The index for shelter also increased in May, rising 0.3 percent. The food index increased 0.2 percent over the month as the food at home index rose 0.1 percent and the food away from home index increased 0.3 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in May. Indexes that increased over the month include communication, airline fares, medical care, personal care, and recreation. Conversely, the indexes for motor vehicle insurance, household furnishings and operations, and new vehicles were among the major indexes that decreased in May.
The all items index rose 4.2 percent for the 12 months ending May, after rising 3.8 percent for the 12 months ending April. The all items less food and energy index rose 2.9 percent over the year, following a 2.8-percent increase over the 12 months ending April. The energy index increased 23.5 percent for the 12 months ending May. The food index increased 3.1 percent over the last year.
Table A. Percent changes in CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U): U.S. city average
| | Seasonally adjusted changes from preceding month | Un-
adjusted
12-mos.
ended
May 2026 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Nov.
2025 | Dec.
2025 | Jan.
2026 | Feb.
2026 | Mar.
2026 | Apr.
2026 | May
2026 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | All items
| - | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.9 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 4.2 | |
Food
| - | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 3.1 | |
Food at home
| - | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.4 | -0.2 | 0.7 | 0.1 | 2.7 | |
Food away from home(1)
| - | 0.7 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 3.5 | |
Energy
| - | 0.3 | -1.5 | 0.6 | 10.9 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 23.5 | |
Energy commodities
| - | -0.3 | -3.3 | 1.1 | 21.3 | 5.6 | 6.7 | 40.6 | |
Gasoline (all types)
| 2.7 | -0.3 | -3.2 | 0.8 | 21.2 | 5.4 | 7.0 | 40.5 | |
Fuel oil
| - | -0.8 | -5.7 | 11.1 | 30.7 | 5.8 | 3.8 | 58.9 | |
Energy services
| - | 1.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 5.3 | |
Electricity
| - | 0.2 | -0.1 | -0.7 | 0.8 | 2.1 | 0.6 | 5.9 | |
Utility (piped) gas service
| - | 3.7 | 1.0 | 3.1 | -0.9 | -0.1 | -0.5 | 3.0 | |
All items less food and energy
| - | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.2 | 2.9 | |
Commodities less food and energy commodities
| - | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.0 | -0.1 | 1.1 | |
New vehicles
| 0.2 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.1 | -0.2 | -0.3 | 0.2 | |
Used cars and trucks
| 0.1 | -0.9 | -1.8 | -0.4 | -0.4 | 0.0 | 0.1 | -2.0 | |
Apparel
| - | 0.3 | 0.3 | 1.3 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 0.3 | 4.8 | |
Medical care commodities(1)
| - | 0.3 | -0.1 | 0.0 | -1.0 | -0.4 | -0.7 | -1.8 | |
Services less energy services
| - | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 3.4 | |
Shelter
| - | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.3 | 3.4 | |
Transportation services
| - | 0.4 | 1.4 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 0.3 | -0.6 | 4.1 | |
Medical care services
| - | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 3.6 | |
Footnotes
(1) Not seasonally adjusted.
| |
NOTE: The Oct and Nov 2025 data values are not available due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations.
|
Food
The index for food rose 0.2 percent in May after rising 0.5 percent in April. The food at home index increased 0.1 percent over the month. Three of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in May. The index for nonalcoholic beverages increased 0.6 percent over the month as the index for beverage materials including coffee and tea rose 1.1 percent. The cereals and bakery products index increased 0.4 percent in May and the fruits and vegetables index rose 0.2 percent.
In contrast, the index for dairy and related products fell 0.6 percent in May as the index for cheese declined 2.9 percent. The meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index decreased 0.2 percent over the month. The index for other food at home was unchanged in May.
The food away from home index rose 0.3 percent in May. The index for limited service meals and the index for full service meals both also rose 0.3 percent over the month.
The index for food at home rose 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending in May. The fruits and vegetables index rose 6.1 percent over the last 12 months. The index for nonalcoholic beverages increased 5.8 percent over the same period and the index for other food at home rose 2.0 percent. The meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index increased 1.8 percent over the 12 months ending in May and the cereals and bakery products index rose 1.9 percent over the same period. In contrast, the index for dairy and related products fell 1.0 percent over the year.
The food away from home index rose 3.5 percent over the last year. The index for full service meals rose 3.8 percent and the index for limited service meals rose 3.3 percent over the same period.
Energy
The index for energy increased 3.9 percent in May, after rising 3.8 percent in April. The gasoline index increased 7.0 percent over the month. (Before seasonal adjustment, gasoline prices increased 8.6 percent in May.) The index for electricity rose 0.6 percent in May. Conversely, the index for natural gas decreased 0.5 percent over the same period.
The index for energy increased 23.5 percent over the past 12 months and the index for gasoline rose 40.5 percent. The electricity index increased 5.9 percent over the 12 months ending in May and the natural gas index rose 3.0 percent.
All items less food and energy
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in May, after rising 0.4 percent in April. The shelter index increased 0.3 percent over the month. The index for owners' equivalent rent rose 0.3 percent in May and the index for rent increased 0.4 percent. The lodging away from home index also rose 0.4 percent over the month.
The index for communication increased 1.3 percent over the month, after falling 0.2 percent in April. The airline fares index rose 2.7 percent in May and the personal care index rose 1.0 percent. The index for recreation rose 0.3 percent over the month as did the index for apparel. The used cars and trucks index increased 0.1 percent in May.
The medical care index increased 0.3 percent in May, after falling 0.1 percent in April. The index for hospital services increased 0.7 percent over the month. Conversely, the prescription drugs index decreased 0.9 percent over the month while the physicians' services index was unchanged in May.
The motor vehicle insurance index declined 1.7 percent in May after rising 0.1 percent in April. The index for household furnishings and operations fell 0.6 percent over the month and the index for new vehicles declined 0.3 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 2.9 percent over the past 12 months. The shelter index increased 3.4 percent over the last year. Other indexes with notable increases over the last year include medical care (+2.6 percent), recreation (+2.6 percent), household furnishings and operations (+3.0 percent), and apparel (+4.8 percent).
Not seasonally adjusted CPI measures
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 4.2 percent over the last 12 months to an index level of 335.123 (1982-84=100). For the month, the index increased 0.6 percent prior to seasonal adjustment.
The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) increased 4.4 percent over the last 12 months to an index level of 328.829 (1982-84=100). For the month, the index increased 0.7 percent prior to seasonal adjustment.
The Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) increased 4.0 percent over the last 12 months. For the month, the index increased 0.6 percent on a not seasonally adjusted basis. Please note that the indexes for the past 10 to 12 months are subject to revision. _______________ The Consumer Price Index news release for June 2026 is scheduled to be published on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. (ET).
Technical Note
Brief Explanation of the CPI
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the change in prices paid by consumers for goods and services. The CPI reflects spending patterns for each of two population groups: all urban consumers and urban wage earners and clerical workers. The all urban consumer group represents over 90 percent of the total U.S. population. It is based on the expenditures of almost all residents of urban or metropolitan areas, including professionals, the self-employed, the poor, the unemployed, and retired people, as well as urban wage earners and clerical workers. Not included in the CPI are the spending patterns of people living in rural nonmetropolitan areas, farming families, people in the Armed Forces, and those in institutions, such as prisons and mental hospitals. Consumer inflation for all urban consumers is measured by two indexes, namely, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U).
The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) is based on the expenditures of households included in the CPI-U definition that meet two requirements: more than one-half of the household's income must come from clerical or wage occupations, and at least one of the household's earners must have been employed for at least 37 weeks during the previous 12 months. The CPI-W population represents approximately 30 percent of the total U.S. population and is a subset of the CPI-U population.
The CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, fuels, transportation, doctors' and dentists' services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. Prices are collected each month in 75 urban areas across the country from about 6,000 housing units and approximately 22,000 retail establishments (department stores, supermarkets, hospitals, and other types of stores and service establishments). All taxes directly associated with the purchase and use of items are included in the index. Prices of fuels and a few other items are obtained every month in all 75 locations. Prices of most other commodities and services are collected every month in the three largest geographic areas and every other month in other areas. Prices of most goods and services are obtained by personal visit, telephone call, web, or app collection by the Bureau's trained representatives.
In calculating the index, price changes for the various items in each location are aggregated using weights, which represent their importance in the spending of the appropriate population group. Local data are then combined to obtain a U.S. city average. For the CPI-U and CPI-W, separate indexes are also published by size of city, by region of the country, for cross-classifications of regions and population-size classes, and for 23 selected local areas. Area indexes do not measure differences in the level of prices among cities; they only measure the average change in prices for each area since the base period. For the C-CPI-U, data are issued only at the national level. The CPI-U and CPI-W are considered final when released, but the C-CPI-U is issued in preliminary form and subject to three subsequent quarterly revisions.
The index measures price change from a designed reference date. For most of the CPI-U and the CPI-W, the reference base is 1982-84 equals 100. The reference base for the C-CPI-U is December 1999 equals 100. An increase of 7 percent from the reference base, for example, is shown as 107.000. Alternatively, that relationship can also be expressed as the price of a base period market basket of goods and services rising from $100 to $107.
Sampling Error in the CPI
The CPI is a statistical estimate that is subject to sampling error because it is based upon a sample of retail prices and not the complete universe of all prices. BLS calculates and publishes estimates of the 1-month, 2-month, 6-month, and 12-month percent change standard errors annually for the CPI-U. These standard error estimates can be used to construct confidence intervals for hypothesis testing. For example, the estimated standard error of the 1-month percent change is 0.04 percent for the U.S. all items CPI. This means that if we repeatedly sample from the universe of all retail prices using the same methodology, and estimate a percentage change for each sample, then 95 percent of these estimates will be within 0.08 percent of the 1-month percentage change based on all retail prices. For example, for a 1-month change of 0.2 percent in the all items CPI-U, we are 95 percent confident that the actual percent change based on all retail prices would fall between 0.12 and 0.28 percent. For the latest data, including information on how to use the estimates of standard error, see www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/variance-estimates/home.htm.
Calculating Index Changes
Movements of the indexes from 1 month to another are usually expressed as percent changes rather than changes in index points, because index point changes are affected by the level of the index in relation to its base period, while percent changes are not. The following table shows an example of using index values to calculate percent changes:
Item A Item B Item C
Year I 112.500 225.000 110.000 Year II 121.500 243.000 128.000 Change in index points 9.000 18.000 18.000 Percent change 9.0/112.500 x 100 = 8.0 18.0/225.000 x 100 = 8.0 18.0/110.000 x 100 = 16.4
Use of Seasonally Adjusted and Unadjusted Data
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) program produces both unadjusted and seasonally adjusted data. Seasonally adjusted data are computed using seasonal factors derived by the X-13ARIMA-SEATS seasonal adjustment method. These factors are updated each February, and the new factors are used to revise the previous 5 years of seasonally adjusted data. The factors are available at www.bls.gov/web/cpi/cpi-seasonal-factors.xlsx. For more information on data revision scheduling, please see the Seasonal Adjustment questions and answers page at www.bls.gov/cpi/seasonal-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm and the Timeline of Seasonal Adjustment Methodological Changes at www.bls.gov/cpi/seasonal-adjustment/timeline-seasonal-adjustment-methodology-changes.htm.
How to Use Seasonally Adjusted and Unadjusted Data
For analyzing short-term price trends in the economy, seasonally adjusted changes are usually preferred since they eliminate the effect of changes that normally occur at the same time and in about the same magnitude every year-such as price movements resulting from weather events, production cycles, model changeovers, holidays, and sales. This allows data users to focus on changes that are not typical for the time of year.
The unadjusted data are of primary interest to consumers concerned about the prices they actually pay. Unadjusted data are also used extensively for escalation purposes. Many collective bargaining contract agreements and pension plans, for example, tie compensation changes to the Consumer Price Index before adjustment for seasonal variation. BLS advises against the use of seasonally adjusted data in escalation agreements because seasonally adjusted series are revised annually for five years.
Intervention Analysis
The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses intervention analysis seasonal adjustment (IASA) for some CPI series. Sometimes extreme values or sharp movements can distort the underlying seasonal pattern of price change. Intervention analysis seasonal adjustment is a process by which the distortions caused by such unusual events are estimated and removed from the data prior to calculation of seasonal factors. The resulting seasonal factors, which more accurately represent the seasonal pattern, are then applied to the unadjusted data.
For example, this procedure was used for the motor fuel series to offset the effects of the 2009 return to normal pricing after the worldwide economic downturn in 2008. Retaining this outlier data during seasonal factor calculation would distort the computation of the seasonal portion of the time series data for motor fuel, so it was estimated and removed from the data prior to seasonal adjustment. Following that, seasonal factors were calculated based on this "prior adjusted" data. These seasonal factors represent a clearer picture of the seasonal pattern in the data. The last step is for motor fuel seasonal factors to be applied to the unadjusted data.
For the seasonal factors introduced for January 2026, BLS adjusted 57 series using intervention analysis seasonal adjustment, including selected food and beverage items, motor fuels and vehicles.
Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Indexes
Seasonally adjusted data, including the U.S. city average all items index levels, are subject to revision for up to 5 years after their original release. Every year, economists in the CPI calculate new seasonal factors for seasonally adjusted series and apply them to the last 5 years of data. Seasonally adjusted indexes beyond the last 5 years of data are considered to be final and not subject to revision. For January 2026, revised seasonal factors and seasonally adjusted indexes for 2021 to 2025 were calculated and published. For series which are directly adjusted using the Census X-13ARIMA-SEATS seasonal adjustment software, the seasonal factors for 2025 will be applied to data for 2026 to produce the seasonally adjusted 2026 indexes. Series which are indirectly seasonally adjusted by summing seasonally adjusted component series have seasonal factors which are derived and are therefore not available in advance.
Determining Seasonal Status
Each year the seasonal status of every series is reevaluated based upon certain statistical criteria. Using these criteria, BLS economists determine whether a series should change its status from "not seasonally adjusted" to "seasonally adjusted", or vice versa. If any of the 81 components of the U.S. city average all items index change their seasonal adjustment status from seasonally adjusted to not seasonally adjusted, not seasonally adjusted data will be used in the aggregation of the dependent series for the last 5 years, but the seasonally adjusted indexes before that period will not be changed. For 2026, 36 of the 81 components of the U.S. city average all items index are not seasonally adjusted.
Contact Information
For additional information about the CPI visit www.bls.gov/cpi or contact the CPI Information and Analysis Section at 202-691-7000 or cpi_info@bls.gov.
For additional information on seasonal adjustment in the CPI visit www.bls.gov/cpi/seasonal-adjustment/home.htm If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
The people with strategic goals just send money and compliments and the administration does what they want.
The energy dominance model was already floated by Trump in his first term. He was the most vocal critic of Nordstream long before the Ukraine war. Biden couldn't push so aggressively because of the green agenda but dutifully shut down Nordstream and made the EU dependent on US LNG.
Now with the oil barons in power, there are no green agenda limitations and the long term plan (which is 100% not from Trump himself) can accelerate.
Look how they already make the EU and Japan rearm with all these levers (they should rearm, but for the purposes of keeping waterways free from whomever blocks them ...).
They don't keep any kind of hedonic measure, which might be interesting. If a consumer would rather have steak, but switches to chicken when it's over $10/pound, and then switches to tofu when chicken hits $10/pound, they're considerably less happy even if they're reasonably well fed.
You could probably use that to calculate some kind of hedonic metric: "I was originally willing to pay only $1/lb for tofu because it brought me 20% of the pleasure that a $5 steak would have." But you're not 80% less happy overall, since food is only part of your total happiness, so you'd need a "basket" of happiness.
> housing
This is actually the hardest to get right because it's the largest, and 2/3 of Americans own homes, so part of their costs are fixed.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/white-house-launches-energy-...
It works towards increasing US energy production at all costs even though the US is already a net exporter.
What is not mentioned of course is that increased US dependencies of countries like Japan are a feature:
https://energytracker.asia/japan-to-buy-record-amounts-of-ln...
That model, extort US investments and let Japan build US infrastructure in return for LNG was from 2025.
Now, with the Iran conflict, Qatar is shut off and Japan can be pressured even more.
https://www.drewry.co.uk/supply-chain-advisors/supply-chain-...
That doesn't actually seem like a huge achievement. Inflation is the rate of change so if you stop creating as much money out of thin air, then it's not really a surprise that prices don't increase as much.
Just to be clear, I am not coming at this from some anti-interventionist or anti-monetary tool standpoint. It's just that demand side tools seem like the wrong lever for the job. We are backing slowly into the corner of persistent inflation or structural failure of some kind.
Then, any share price appreciation on the shares is captured by you at vesting, rather than being paid in cash (the value of which has been inflated away) and then purchasing shares/index that has risen in the last 1-4 years.
If you are paid in cash, you will be buying fewer shares per dollar (and per year) rather than getting the same number.
Then there's the "owner's equivalent rent" BS and this is 25% of CPI. It answers the question "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished, and without utilities?" It assumes rental price and housing costs are somehow linked when in reality asset prices have far outstripped rent.
I see your argument. It’s still short term. A fifth of Japanese electricity comes from renewables [1]. Meanwhile, Japan is diversifying its LNG suppliers [2].
With respect to those numbers, I remember this recent accusation of price-fixing across 2019-2021 [0] that might have an effect, although I also have reservations about how much to trust anything coming out of the rotting US Department of PresidentsPersonalLawyers these days.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/four-worlds-largest-container...
From what I can tell it’s also supercharging coal, particularly in Asia, e.g. India investing in coal gasification infrastructure [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...
The broad idea is you want a number low enough that people don't price inflation expectations into day-to-day pricing but not so low that a hiccup causes deflation.
The empirical evidence around inflation persistence is a bit all over the place, but broadly suggests people start daily indexing between 2 and 5%. When that starts to happen, restraining inflation without causing a depression becomes incredibly hard, because people will actively countermand policy moves.
But the bigger issue is that inflation is generally distributed much more evenly than wage increases. Very few employers offer a COLA that is automatic, so wages almost always trail inflationary pressure.
If currency doesn't devalue then stuffing it under a mattress looks like a reasonable alternative to investing. If we hit deflation you can receive gains for "free" and borrowed money becomes more expensive over time. Neither of which our economic system is setup to handle.
We punish people who hoard cash by devaluing it thus encouraging them to put the money to work.
Stash paper cash in your safe and sure, you lose purchasing power. Use fiat money the way it's designed to be used, instead of using it like gold coins, and it works better.
An offhand remark made by New Zealand's Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, during a 1988 television interview.
I get your point. The value of stock isn’t that it’s stock per se, but rather that it’s inflation-resistant even when illiquid.
It's pricing the cost of shelter. Renting a home is buying shelther. Buying a home is buying shelter and buying a financial asset. OER is the way you separate the last two components. Otherwise, you'd have to only look at rents to determine housing prices, which would be rubbish in a country where most households live in homes they own.
It's even more interesting to contrast this from 1971 onward. 1971 is when Bretton Woods ended and the government was given a free hand to start 'printing money' so to speak, and inflation became the new policy. Since then the CPI has increased by more than 800 points, 1600% more than our baseline. And it's only increasing faster now - to the point that these numbers I'm giving are already rather outdated.
[1] - https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...
So it's not that "2% is good", but more that "2% is the best buffer we've decided above the <0% super scary threshold"
However, if we are to change gears, the benefit you get out of a restaurant isn't constant either. Aside from maybe those trying to serve the elderly population, where there seems to be a viable niche of providing "remembrance of how things were in the good old days", restaurants that try to offer constant value quickly go out of business. They are forever needing to up their game to appeal to the typical clientele. Customers want increasingly more benefit as time marches forward to justify the visit.
An individual's perception of benefit is personal, so it is true that any given individual may not find increased benefit in restaurants trying to outdo each other by offering more and more benefits, but within populations it seems quite apparent that restaurants that "win" generally are offering more benefits (higher quality/more exotic/creative food, increasingly sophisticated ambiance, etc.) than they did in the past.
There are many other reasons a positive inflation rate is better than substantially near 0. One common complaint about inflation is that erodes real wages because nominal wages are sticky, but this is actually a good thing. It gives businesses room to breathe during downturns without cutting nominal wages or having to cut staff. Positive inflation also forces cash into productive uses which helps monetary policy because it keeps the actaul money supply more stable.
...yes it is? It's seeing how many dollars you need for some specific goods.
> the benefit you get out of a restaurant isn't constant either
It's not exactly constant but it's pretty close. Especially over a single decade. And we can assume here that people are going to similar restaurants.
To be sure, the P in CPI stands for price, but that doesn't mean it is the same thing as price. The C and I are also there to indicate that it is something else.
The price of a dollar is one dollar. That's a useless statistic.
The CPI basket is definitely not fixed. It is constantly evolving to ensure that the metric is useful. Consumption habits are not fixed.
> The price of a dollar is one dollar.
Technically true, just like the price of one iPhone is the price of one iPhone (assuming equivalent specs), but in the real world price is used to compare the value of different things. Currently, the price of an iPhone 17 Pro is 238 bushels of corn.
Steak is objectively more valuable in the traditional sense, as evidenced by the price, and also quite arguably more valuable than ground beef in the "benefit" sense, but that doesn't matter. Ground beef is just as good in the basket as CPI only needs to see relative change in price. It is not measuring benefit.