Consumer Price Index (CPI)

This chart plots the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers — the index level itself, monthly and seasonally adjusted, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics via the FRED series named under the chart. The index is the basket: the measured price of what urban consumers actually buy, set to 100 in its reference period and climbing ever since. The page refreshes hourly and shows the current reading with the trailing 90-day change.

Read the level as the accumulated cost of living. Because prices almost never fall in aggregate, this line climbs in nearly every month on the chart — the question is never its direction but its steepness. A stretch where the line visibly steepens is a stretch where the cost of the basket accelerated; a flattening is disinflation showing up in the level.

For US markets the level matters mostly as the raw material of the inflation rate, which is what the Federal Reserve and the bond market actually trade on. But the level has its own quiet significance: wages, contracts, tax brackets and Social Security payments are all indexed against this series, so its climb is the benchmark every income is silently measured against.

The caveats: CPI is monthly and arrives roughly two weeks after the month it measures, so the newest point is always a look backwards. The series is seasonally adjusted and periodically revised in method, and no single basket matches any one household’s experience. For the pace of price growth rather than the level, see the inflation-rate page.