The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy.
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Chapter 17. The Consumer
Price Index (Updated 2-14-2018)
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the
average change over time in the prices of consumer
itemsgoods and services that people buy for day-to-
day living. The CPI is a complex measure that combines eco-
nomic theory with sampling and other statistical techniques
and uses data from several surveys to produce a timely and
precise measure of average price change for the consumption
sector of the American economy. Production of the CPI re-
quires the skills of many professionals, including economists,
statisticians, computer scientists, data collectors and others.
The CPI surveys rely on the voluntary cooperation of many
people and establishments throughout the country who, with-
out compulsion or compensation, supply data to the govern-
ment's data collection staff.
Part I. Overview of the CPI
Three CPI series. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS;
the Bureau) publishes CPI data every month. The three main
CPI series are
CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)
CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers
(CPI-W)
Chained CPI for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U)
The CPI for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U, which BLS
began publishing in January 1978, represents the buying
habits of the residents of urban or metropolitan areas in the
United States. The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical
Workers, or CPI-W, the oldest of the series, covers a subset of
the urban population.1 The prices used for producing these
two series are the same. The CPI-U and CPI-W differ only in
1 Specifically, the CPI-U (all-urban) population consists of all urban house-
holds in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and in urban places of 2,500
inhabitants or more. Nonfarm consumers living in rural areas within MSAs
are included, but the index excludes rural nonmetropolitan consumers and
the military and the institutional population. The urban wage earner and
clerical worker (CPI-W) population consists of consumer units with clerical
workers, sales