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Last edited Fri Dec 19, 2025, 12:13 PM - Edit history (1)

CPI (seasonally adjusted)
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0

At the top right, click on More Formatting Options

On the left are some check boxes. Besides the "Original Data Value" one which is already checked,

Check the 2-Month Percent Change and the 3-Month Percent Change and the 12-Month Percent Change checkboxes (Note the 1-month change one only displays thru September so don't bother with that)

Then click the "Retrieve Data" button.

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I like the 3-month average as it's a more recent measure than the 12-month one, but more than a "one-off" single month data point. In the last 3 months (the middle table and graph, repeated below), prices increased 0.5%. That annualizes to about a 2.0% inflation rate (using the actual index values for the calculation, and taking into account compounding, it comes to 2.08%, essentially matching the Fed's 2% target on a 3-month basis).

The 3 month rolling average, % change over 3 months:

These are percent increases over 3 months. To roughly annualize, multiply the numbers by 4

By the way, the CORE CPI 3 month average, annualized, is 1.6%
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0L1E

Year-over-year inflation is at 2.7% for the CPI and 2.6% for the CORE CPI

All this wipes out my "according to the administrations own numbers, the year-over-year has been rising since May blah blah and the 3 month average is at 3.6% annualized and rising blah blah" that I've been posting ever since the September numbers came out

There have been articles in the media disparaging the report, some are in this thread, so my shtick will be mostly silently waiting for the December numbers to come out on January 9.