About Consumer Prices & how it's measured
This dashboard tracks how much everyday things cost and how fast those costs are rising, using the U.S. government's official price data — the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It shows the national picture alongside the West region (which includes California), and adds one measure of our own: a Consumer inflation rate built from the essentials a household actually buys.
The three numbers
- Year-over-year (YoY) — change versus the same month a year earlier. This is the “inflation rate” the charts plot.
- Month-over-month (MoM) — change from the prior month; timelier but noisier.
- Index — the raw CPI level (1982–84 = 100); for comparing periods, not a percentage.
Figures are not seasonally adjusted, which keeps the U.S. and West numbers directly comparable — year-over-year comparisons already cancel out seasonal patterns. CPI updates monthly, about two weeks after each month ends.
Two geographies
- U.S. city average — the national index; the figure in national headlines.
- West region — the 13 western states including California, the closest official geography to the Central Valley. It publishes fewer categories than the national index, so some West values may be absent (shown as a gap, not a zero).
The categories
- All items — the whole basket; the headline number.
- Core — all items except food and energy; the slower-moving underlying trend.
- Food is groceries plus dining out; Food at home is groceries only.
- Energy is home energy plus motor fuel; Gasoline is pump prices alone.
- Shelter (rent + owners’ equivalent) is the largest slice; plus Transportation, Medical care, and Apparel.
Consumer inflation — our headline measure
The two most-cited numbers each leave something out. Core excludes all food and energy, so it understates what households feel when gas and groceries jump. Headline includes everything, even restaurant meals that not every budget spends on. Our Consumer inflation figure blends the pieces in between:
Core + Energy + Food‑at‑home → essentially all items except restaurant meals
It’s a weighted average of those three components’ year-over-year rates — weighted because core is about 80% of a household budget, energy ~7%, and food-at-home ~8%, so a plain average would badly overstate inflation. The result sits between core and headline: above core whenever energy or groceries are climbing (exactly when core hides the pain), keeping the full weight of an energy spike while dropping cheaper-trending dining out.
Where’s housing? Shelter (rent and owners’ equivalent) isn’t a separate term — it’s the single largest piece inside core, so it’s already fully counted, at roughly a third of the whole measure. The chart plots it as a dashed “Shelter (in core)” line for context, without adding it twice.
Good to know
- All figures are official BLS series; only Consumer inflation is a Lodi411 blend of them.
- The weights are national and refreshed yearly, so they approximate rather than exactly match the West’s spending mix.
- This is a regional and national picture — for truly local prices, pair it with Lodi411’s grocery and fuel tracking.
- Recent months can be revised as late data arrives.
