Inside the Consumer Price Index: August 2025

Inflation affects everything from grocery bills to rent, making the Consumer Price Index one of the most closely watched economic indicators. What does inflation mean at the micro level — specifically to your household? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart below illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U, which we'll refer to hereafter as the CPI. The BLS weighs these ...