No CPI data for October, partially made-up CPI data for November, and now 3 months’ of doctored OER data which weighs 26% of overall CPI.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics explained today in its CPI report for November that most data for October was missing and some data for November was missing, and that it filled in the gaps in the November data, including by “approximating missing data points” with whatever, including for Owners Equivalent of Rent (OER), the biggest component of CPI, weighing 26% of overall CPI, for 33% of core CPI, and for 44% of core services CPI.
OER had a suspicious outlier-plunge in September, and that suspicious outlier-plunge in September was carried forward to October and November. And the BLS even explained some of it in separate notes, and so it’s not a secret.
This is a screenshot of the CPI summary table. You can see that nearly all the entries for month-to-month changes in October and November are missing. The exceptions are the entries for which BLS relies on “nonsurvey data,” such as gasoline prices and new and used vehicle prices (it purchases the vehicle data from J.D. Power).
What BLS said about the missing data and how it dealt with it.
In its summary report, BLS said: “BLS did not collect survey data for October 2025 due to a lapse in appropriations. BLS was unable to retroactively collect these data. For a few indexes, BLS uses nonsurvey data sources instead of survey data to make the index calculations. BLS was able to retroactively acquire most of the nonsurvey data for October. CPI data collection resumed on November 14, 2025.”
In a separate note, BLS briefly explained some of the other shortcomings of this CPI release.
“What was the impact on November data collection? Collection began on Friday, November 14. By authorizing additional collection hours, BLS attempted to collect data for the entire month of November.”
It said “attempted to collect.”
And this is a bad joke: “How were November indexes calculated? November 2025 indexes were calculated by comparing November 2025 prices with October 2025 prices.” But October prices don’t exist in the data… “BLS could not collect October 2025 reference period survey data, so survey data were carried forward to October 2025 from September 2025 in accordance with normal procedures.”
In other words, BLS just made up the October data.
And the September data, which was used as base for the made-up October data, was marred by the total outlier plunge of OER, which accounts for 26% of overall CPI, for 33% of core CPI, and for 44% of core services CPI. And that outlier plunge in September was carried forward to October and November.
Specifically about OER: “BLS calculates rent and owners’ equivalent rent using six-month panel collection [surveys are sent to the same address every six months, instead of every month].
So there was this suspicious outlier drop in September, and rather than bouncing back, as it should have done, it was carried forward to October and November, making for one heck of a funny chart below.
Using the BLS index data for OER as provided today…
Aug: 430.69
Sep: 431.27
Oct:
Nov: 432.44
…this is what the now clearly doctored OER looks like, month-to-month percentage change, annualized. It has been at an annualized rate of 1.6% for the past three months, compared to an average 4.1% in the six months before the doctored September. That’s a sudden 2.4 percentage-point plunge out of nowhere for the third month in a row.
And this doctored component is 26% of overall CPI, for 33% of core CPI, and for 44% of core services CPI, turning the entire CPI data into a bad joke 🤣 or worse 😬
But it’s not a bad joke, it’s much worse.
Lots of things depend on CPI, including the calculation of the “inflation protection” in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), I-series savings bonds the government sells to retail investors, Social Security COLAs, and other inflation adjustments paid to investors and beneficiaries, and they will all be underpaid for inflation.
This data here also impacts broader economic data that is adjusted to inflation, including “real” consumer spending and “real” GDP because the BEA, which produces those overall economic indices, uses some of this CPI data, including OER, for its calculation of the PCE price index and the GDP deflator, among others.
BLS is now causing serious issues with all of them, with investors and beneficiaries getting short-changed on their inflation protection, and with inflation-adjusted economic data getting inflated, which would, of course, suit the administration’s narrative.
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Thank you… very important article on today’s CPI report and your findings match our in-house indicators.
yes thank you Wolf, this is my first stop to come get the real story after numbers were released.
Great article, Wolf. I was waiting for my canary (you) to confirm when the data went sour.
So now what? If the data is bad, how does that manifest forward? That’s the part I can’t quite figure out, and I guess if we could, we’d all be rich.
I started investigating how to acquire Euros as a non-EU resident and US citizen…
talk about jumping out of the cooking pot and into the frying pan.
I think you should be looking for currencies issued by countries with relatively low debt/GDP ratios compared to the US (125% and rising to oblivion), like:
Australia: 44%
New Zealand: 45%
South Korea: 47%
Brazil: 76.5%
Europe has some weird situations, like Switzerland, which is basically a worldwide investment fund, and Ireland, which is basically a tax haven that manufactures GDP from accounting gimmicks.
Any other North American country is too close to and dependent upon the US to serve as a useful hedge if the US goes bad.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/debt-to-gdp-ratio-by-country
Super easy to do on Interactive Brokers.
Of you can buy any equity or bond ETF tracking EUropean assets and indirectly that makes you long EUR (
Everything is pegged to dollars.
Our dollar YOUR problem.
I.e. your country’s problem,
I.e. go suck an egg with your complaints.
I.e. you’re addicted, and you can’t change to another currency that isn’t pegged to dollars.
🤷🏻♂️
BLS faked it.
Where does ultimate accountability fall?
With BLS or the politicians who sponsored and voted for the shutdown?
I know where my finger points.
pj:
IMVHO, BLS, which I worked with daily for many years while analyzing construction costs up into the billions,
HAS ALWAYS ”FAKED IT”,,, if for no other reason, rational or not, that BLS did not ever have ”reliable data.”
What this current episode demonstrated is exactly how clear it is that BLS usually ”guesstimates”.
Hedge accordingly.
Scummo Inc & his wise guy “officials” are to blame— for the monstrous economic damage being done to 90% of America with this unprecedented Treasury rape for the oligarchy.
Yes! Thank you for the article. I’m not shocked this happened, but I’m curious what the end game is? Most of the voting population isn’t tracking CPI. Biden tried convincing the public there was no inflation too. Didn’t end well. Inflation and people FEELING poor is how elections are lost. That being if we don’t go full third world country and also have fake election data.
Maybe to make everyone flee to gold and bitcoin? Like just wtf, let’s lower interest rates and run the economy hot and increase the wealth divide more, until what theres civil unrest? Until we become a third world country?
Curious why the 10 year dropped though on a report people know was bs?
“And this is a bad joke…”
Yes, however what isn’t funny is that this the United States. We are not ready for what all this means. There’s a reason so many of you are looking at passports or are in the process of moving out. Traders/gamblers are more sensitive to what is coming than most “Safe” people.
We’re on borrowed time right now as people still believe the ship will right itself.
I know people wanting to permanently move out of the US. They are discovering that it’s very difficult and/or expensive to move to the “nice countries”. Turns out, the “nice countries” are much stricter on immigration than our mean country. Maybe they should go by boat?
Check out Uruguay. Very welcoming, muy tranquilo
Haven’t been, but I enjoyed visits to South America. Met lots of good people. Moving there is a lot easier than moving to Europe.
All the perks of Europe (ex rail transit) without the Europeans. Very few north Americans (estadounidenses). The average Uruguayan speaks better English than an american teenager. 150 miles of mostly unspoiled south Atlantic coastline and the best steak in the world.
Wait, why am I telling you guys this? Go to Europe, go to Europe!!
Good place to park one’s money…so I have been told.
Do extensive and thorough ”Due Diligence”,,, far damn shore regarding Uruguay…
Beautiful area, and likely affordable,,, but, but but,
Many bad and badder folx have already figured out how ”soft” normal guv mint processes are there…
Brazil just threw a president in jail.
South Korea just threw a president in jail.
Greece just endured an economic collapse and managed NOT to descend into dictatorship.
It seems like the countries that suffered dictatorships in the 1970s and 80s are the ones accomplishing the greatest feats of governance during this internet-driven era of democratic decline. It’s as if the populations with living memory of living under dictatorships are inoculated against the empty promises of far right and far left.
Meanwhile, the old WW2 allies have gone from paragons of democracy to declining into authoritarianism, corruption, and oligarchy.
Uruguay is among the few countries getting better, with one of the highest democracy index and human rights index scores in the world.
But you don’t want Americans in Uruguay. I say this even though Uruguay represents an escape route for me. For one, Americans are gullible and will believe whatever they read on their phones. Secondly, they refuse to participate in politics or civic society, making them unsuitable as contributors in a real democracy.
This guy gets it.
Consider Pepe Mujica who spent 12 years alone at the bottom of a well as a prisoner of the Uruguayan dictatorship before his release in 1985. 25 years later he was president of the country. Once in power he didn’t go on a retribution rampage, he donated his salary to charity. He refused to live in the presidential ‘palace’ and stayed in his 3 room farmhouse outside Montevideo. He drove a battered VW bug into work everyday and often picked up unknowing hitchhikers. He pushed through legislation legalizing same sex marriage and weed. He loudly harangued Obama about ongoing american imperialism on his only visit to the white house.
We could learn a thing or two from this tiny nation of 3 million humans and 12 million cows.
Just curious.
“Many” are “looking” for “moving out” to where…exactly?
That has immigration laws that would accept you?
There’s actually quite a few places that may accept some of the reading demographic here.
I know it’s not all, but a certain percentage of folks here seem to have some assets and be at/ approaching retirement age.
If it’s a case of moving somewhere to distribute your wealth, by the day, then you have options.
There’s some net worth/ passive income requirements that are designed to help stimulate local economy, and not give up the local jobs.
A lot of Americans I know are just using ancestry visas–if you can go back in your family tree enough generations, you can probably find your ancestor who came to the US.
And esp most European countries have systems where you can get fairly and quick citizenship if you track down the right documents proving your ancestry. It varies alot of course but this is a common option, also some Asian countries from what I’ve heard allow this. Otherwise it often involves investment or some kind of work sponsorship overseas, but ancestry seems to be best route if you can get those old family documents.
Sorry for all the dumb questions, but why are traders more sensitive to what’s coming? And what’s coming? And what’s a “safe” person?
I assume no one gambles when the economic money stops flowing.
I assume traders have to deal with price changes before inflation is recorded, they also see changes in the flow of money first.
Safe people have stable jobs and don’t gamble or trade for a living.
Oh, and you asked what’s coming? Trump seems to be trying to pull an erdogan to control interest rates without limit.
Erdogan had inflation raging for a long time, people who didn’t own assets saw there savings disappear overnight. If Trump says inflation is low, he can lower it further to make the economy run hotter.
It did technically work for erdogan in the long run, their economy is doing fine now, but he basically nullified all the local liquid currency over the course of a small amount of time. He reset the financial system basically, wiped out all debts by making money meaningless.
So it’s not technically a problem if you change all your money to something else while the dollar reset happens, then change your money back to dollars after inflation cools again.
Haz, thank you for the reply. So just to be clear, if an Erdogan situation happened here in the US, are we just talking about cash in the bank or financial assets like 401ks being affected as well?
I know how to turn cash into something else. I don’t know if I have the balls to take a tax hit on my 401k, and then how do I even put all that money back later?
By now the world at large should not be surprised at the breadth and width of corruption in the Trump Administration. Today’s announcement of the merger between Trump Media and fusion company TAE Technologies should offend the olfactory system of anyone with two nostrils.
Every administration since Bush Jr has been corrupt.
The trump family is making billions upon billions in paper profits well until crypto crashes. Dick Cheney company he lead, Haliburton made money but on a personal level this is uncharted. People freaked out when Hunter sold paintings for 600k, trump JR is getting billions, no bid contracts, foreign government investing etc. $1776 payment to solders was already approved by congress for housing increase, trump rebranded it and claimed the money is coming from tariffs, Pathetic! Sorry for posting too much, I will take break until next week. I am a proud capitalist but i hate Croney capitalism. DJT is straight out of atlas shrug novel the crooked government that gets paid for favors.
what about the millions into the various shell companies of Joe Biden directly from China after Hunter called his contacts and made certain comments about the “big guy”???
“$1776 payment to solders was already approved by congress for housing increase, trump rebranded it”
Kinda reminds me of how the COVID stimulus checks were rebranded.
Corruption in US politics is ridiculous. How do all these senators, representatives, etc. become multi-millionaires…Biden is a perfect example, how did he become wealthy without ever having a real job???
The one thing I like about Trump is that it is very obvious when he lies or does something unethical, and the media is all over him about it. The other guys and gals…not so much, but it has been going on for a long time. Trump is a worse liar but apparently better at making money.
Biden never had a lot of money, he had to use his house as collateral for a loan to run for President in 2020.
Let’s be honest, it was the Clintons who set the standard for getting rich off the oval office. They became hundred-millionaires within a matter of years and every president since then wants the same. And Bill’s willingness to deregulate banking in the 90s was the main reason they became the darlings of the elite
Stop the TDS postings!
Have you ever heard of the Clinton Global Initiative or Hunter Biden and Burisma?
Thank you. I was surprised this got past moderation. The scale is what’s unique, and this article deals with the scale of the disinformation. Some people only care about economic disinformation, but it is everywhere. I can’t trust many of the government agencies I went to for solid information just last year, and that is by design.
The transparency and impartiality in information will not recover in time for our salvation. Whatever wokeness you complain about pales in comparison to the deliberate destruction of public institutions who formerly provided facts.
Stop the CDS (the original) and BDS postings!
All the Clinton/Biden stuff was investigated umpteen times by the opposition and nothing ever came of it because it was primarily innuendo (not that anyone is “clean”).
All they got on Hunter was tax evasion and a flimsy weapons possession while an addict charge.
Knock it off with this garbage, this is a blog for examining the facts.
Update on my last as the news changes…the alleged Brown murderer…now also being tagged with the MIT professor murder…was a DEI program approved naturalized citizen.
Incoming “whataboutism” in 3, 2, 1 – KABOOOM!
Burisma etc was hardly just some innuendo or Hunter wouldn’t have required a blanket presidential pardon for everything he did over about a decade. Stop lying.
The Clintons and Bidens were every bit as corrupt as the Trumps, the problem is that none of the criminal activity among the elites is EVER punished.
Trying to make Biden seem equivalent to Trump just makes you look ignorant.
I suppose the beliefs and actions of one’s favorite donor class could and should be argued about…makes more sense to me, anyway.
eg; most climate data is BS, vs, most health care data is BS….
and therefore so is the societal damage caused by donors making their excess money used for making said donations off of either.
I guess before Bush Jr., administrations just hid the corruption better.
Carter was probably the last not-very corrupt preznit, and he wasn’t a very good preznit at that, being the first one of either party to sell out on the New Deal which had created the greatest wide-spread prosperity, lowest levels of economic inequality, and longest period of financial stability in the history of the US. A pox on both of our legacy parties. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every POTUS admin since Eisenhower has been corrupt, and most if not all since George W similarly.
That this has not been documented previously must be put to the so called 4th estate who have been complicit and have benefited accordingly.
Please don’t mistake silence for agreement.
That has clearly proven deadly for many generations.
I like you Vet. Not many here even know who Billy Sol Estes was. You had to live through it. Lady Bird taught Hillary everything she knew, if only by example. LBJ’s actions put Trump to shame, but there was no internet so very few outside of Austin knew who that scoundrel really was.
Never has it been this blatant. It’s unprecedented. Trump coins, Melania coins, Sneakers
At least it is voluntary if you invest or not in that nonsense.
The “10% to the big guy” of taxpayer money was mandatory.
It’s not that simple.
To the extent that related business “deals” in other countries lead to better terms for those countries than they’d otherwise get, then the taxpayer is most definitely getting soaked.
The way CPI is used to the common folk is, “Hey, beef prices are high, but we believe should buy chicken. Don’t buy coffee and stick to tea. Learn to swap your engine and replace the AC on your home.” The consumer isn’t going to just change overnight.
The Fed’s “favorite” metric PCE for inflation is “chain weighted”….ie substitutions for items that have become too expensive.
I would call that a metric biased to read lower numbers.
So all the PCE inflation indices during the 2020-2024 admin were probably even higher?
Go buy a can of paint and get back to us.
“Learn to swap your engine and replace the AC on your home.”
High car repair prices (along with sloppy work) are the entire reason I began fixing my own vehicles instead of taking them to a shop. I’ve never paid so little for vehicle maintenance in my life.
P.s. change your oil every 5000 miles and you won’t need to learn to swap your engine.
Yeah, I saw the same table as you with the missing data and immediately remembered your flagging of the weird OER data. Good catch by the way. I also thought to myself, why did Trump have his speech last night? Maybe he saw this data ahead of time? Maybe he made sure the data ended as it did? Lastly, I have NEVER been a fan of manipulated data. Thanks for what you do, I have learned from you.
What are your thoughts on what someone from the administration said this week that shelter deflation will overwhelm any goods inflation which would lower CPI next year?
Shelter makes up a very large portion of the CPI.
All warning bells went off when I heard that. “From the top down” is what I heard between the lines, and what we’re looking at today confirms that and is truly chilling.
TIPS spreads should blow out on this! They need at least an extra 50bps (100bps?) on their breakevens.
Going by today’s 5 yr TIPS auction they got about 2.3 basis points extra.
TIPS spreads are determined by *CPI* expectations, not “real” inflation expectations, right? So why would they widen? I get the idea (people should expect more from their TIPS if the government is lowballing) but how does this translate to price movement?
No, TIPS inflation protection is calculated from the actual CPI rates and is added to the TIPS principal as you go, so that the principal keeps growing.
TIPS have a separate coupon interest payment which is paid twice a year to the holders, and when factored to the market price, it determines the “yield” of the TIPS (1.86% today).
Holders of TIPS get both, the inflation protection calculated from CPI plus the coupon interest.
Investors buy TIPS for inflation protection. They are seeking to hedge real inflation, but they accept that CPI is an imperfect measure of changes in real inflation. If there is a clear and actionable weakening of CPI as a measure of real inflation, then it stands to reason TIPS investors will value TIPS less as an inflation hedge and therefore either 1) abandon them in some numbers, raising the market-clearing “real yield” component of TIPS, and/or 2) continue holding them but require a higher “real yield” component to compensate for CPI’s degraded quality as a hedge. That’s what Gattopardo is talking about, and he estimates the adjustment to the real yield component should be 50 bps. He is not confused about the distinction between the CPI component and the real yield component on TIPS.
If it was so secret squirt chilling then the report wouldn’t have had the explanatory notes in it.
Furthermore, the data collected for future reports will correct the numbers going forward.
The data didn’t correct the outlier of OER for September. It just carried that outlier forward in a straight line for two more months — see the chart in the article. That was a DECISION.
If BLS corrects these three months of OER with a huge upward revisions in December that brings OER back into trend, then yes, and I will be happy to report on it and show in a chart. But it will move CPI up by a large amount — and so that’s unlikely to happen.
I remember well how they handled the health insurance CPI when it went awry in 2022 and 2023 (under Biden). They didn’t let it self-correct. They changed the algo so that the data going forward would only show small increases, rather than a big self-correction. I wrote several articles about this here, including how BLS explained it. You’ll find some of those articles if you google: health insurance CPI chickenshit
You’re Fired? 2028
Wolf, this is perhaps one of the most important pieces of analysis you have ever written. If the bond market starts to lose trust in the integrity of the CPI data, all bets are off.
And tech will go up, so who really cares?
I’m glad that the details/implications of government reported metrics and their methodologies are being closely scrutinized and sometimes met with a fair degree of skepticism.
But.
When the very same degree of scrutiny was advocated for the last 20+ years, the primary response from media types was a very loud/empowered chorus of “those concerns are nothing but baseless conspiracy theories”.
People can’t have it both ways, depending upon who is in power.
The very same media that couldn’t detect Biden’s senility for 5+ years (or any number of other impostures) all of sudden turns into Columbo with a proctologist’s microscope once power changes parties.
Which is fine and all to the good for the country.
But it has to *perpetually apply* (such is the nature of power and the manifold forms of its abuse) and not just when it is convenient for partisan interests.
“But it has to *perpetually apply* (such is the nature of power and the manifold forms of its abuse) and not just when it is convenient for partisan interests.”
This is why we will fail and why many will suffer. Life isn’t serious anymore, unless the media tells you its serious. Most humans do not advance morally or intellectually past high school.
Do you really expect the same people who pretended inflation didn’t exist after printing $5 trillion to suddenly be honest about inflation?
(hint: they aren’t, now all of a sudden inflation is destroying the middle class, and it is all because tarriffs)
Thanks cas127, agreed. You don’t have to be a Shadow Stats conspiracy theorist to see that CPI is clearly understated esp for housing, and has been for years. It’s sad because TIPS are cool for wealth protection but the incentives are all wrong.
Bingo.
Specifically the monthly rite of substantial changes to unemployment data.
I think you are perfectly demonstrating what is wrong in America.
People can no longer distinguish fact or fiction or degree of nuance.
For years nuts complained about bad stats coming out of the BLS, but that conspiracy theory would require dozens of mid level bureaucrats to go against everything they ever worked for and remain quiet about it.
Now with the DOGE cuts and the clear threat of retaliation, there are fewer people to fight back and have a strong incentive to shut uo and so what they are told.
Remember it wasn’t Biden or Obama who fired the head of the BLS because they produced bad news.
Wake up. Learn nuance.
Jimbo
Thanks for the English lesson and diagnosing us obtuse Americans.
To clarify – the BLS reporting has been scrutinized by “nuts” for DECADES—just different types and long before you showed up here to throw out insults.
Every administration gets accused of bias, every revision gets over‑interpreted, and every shutdown gets analyzed differently.
This isn’t about “nuts” or “cults”; it’s about the fact that the 2025 shutdown was the first time in 77 years that BLS couldn’t collect data at all, thanks to the historic Democratic shutdown.
FYI- the “firing” and “bad news” you refer to was due to some of the worst BLS reporting and largest revisions in history. Not to mention the 2024 reporting wreaked political gamesmanship.
What I remember is Obama and Biden didn’t really do much at all including holding failed department leaders accountable for failing the American people.
I lost all trust in the integrity of the CPI data and sold all of my TIPS in August, when Trump fired the civil servant heading the BLS just because he didn’t like the inflation and jobs numbers. After seeing that, do you think the new BLS Commissioner is ever going to risk their job by reporting bad numbers?
Bingo!!!!
And I don’t anticipate the data getting more accurate from here, given the administration. They will do what they can to push out data that helps their calls for rate cuts, despite the harm to American citizens.
So the 50 basis point emergency rate cut in September 2024 didn’t cause harm?
It harmed me. First fair rates (prob still too low) since 2008.
What about it?
I know what you’re implying, 2b. And to think that a (political) easing would somehow make a last minute difference in an election is unrealistic.
Democrats’ record-long shutdown wrecked the CPI data—furloughed BLS staff, canceled October’s report entirely, and turned November’s into unreliable noise. They knew what they were doing. Blowing up the tracks ahead.
Under Biden-Harris, when their reckless spending and anti-energy policies sent inflation soaring to 9%, these same voices treated CPI as sacred—no scrutiny allowed.
Now, just 11 months into Trump’s fixes—unleashing American energy, securing the border, slashing regs—inflation’s down to 2.7%, gas prices plunging, shelter costs cooling, real wages finally rising. Your portfolios bulging.
Yet suddenly so many “skeptical” experts crying foul over the very transparency they blocked.
Pure hypocrisy. You can’t cope with the Biden mess being cleaned up fast.
True accountability doesn’t flip with the party in power.
You cultists are so weird.
Weird Cultist?
And I thought there were posting guidelines on this site.
So, you don’t know how CPI data is collected – Shocking!
GOVERNMENT WORKERS STILL MAKE PHONE CALLS and door-knock thousands of stores/landlords monthly for your precious price tags. Ask Wolf…
But wait… Democrats closed the Gov. for record time so those workers sat home in an epic 43-day shutdown.
October CPI? Poof, vanished!
November? A hilarious Swiss cheese mess of blanks.
Biden-Harris era? inflation 9.1%, they chant “transitory” like a bad cult mantra for YEARS.
CPI? Untouchable holy relic—question it? You’re a heretic!
Biden: “The reports are out of date”
Trump magic – Your portfolio fatter…
Energy boom, border closed, inflation crashes to 2.7%, gas cheaper than your latte.
The report is not the JFK files and we did land on the moon.
Wake up—hypocrisy called, it wants its cult robes back.
Oh brother; just stop with the political entertainment. You must be new here; we deal in the real world; not fan Fiction.
Political? Have you not read the comments?
Oh, it is only political if it sounds weird and cult like.
Got it.
You must have missed these –
XR
Dec 18, 2025 at 12:28 pm
By now the world at large should not be surprised at the breadth and width of corruption in the Trump Administration.
Yappymutt
Dec 18, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Delusion: ‘just find me 11,000 more votes, as I don’t care where you get them’. Trump recorded tellin a prominent Georgia official in 2020.
Come on man, exactly what could anyone expect from a request like that?
TrBond
Dec 18, 2025 at 12:39 pm
Did Alan Greenspan write the BLS’s “explanations “?
Gattopardo
Dec 18, 2025 at 7:49 pm
Not so fast with the “Trump is adjusting numbers” stuff. This isn’t like his Sharpie markup of the path for Hurricane Whatever a few years ago.
> inflation’s down to 2.7%
This article is literally pointing out that inflation is not in reality at 2.7%, the data is being manipulated and you blindly state that it is 2.7%. There’s no critical analysis here.
> Democrats’ record-long shutdown
Partisan takes are really low value / effort and are naive. It’s disappointing to see such weak commentary on a site that generally strives for higher quality analytical discussion. No need to get into politics as it is naive to assume a single party is responsible for the problems of a whole country.
Mr. Regard,
Inflation – well, maybe it’s 3%, maybe 2.5% or maybe lower if you hate the data so much—but it’s not 9% and “transitory”—remember that reality?
And yes, the Democrats did shut the government down. That really happened. Facts don’t need permission.
I came late to the party, so I missed some of the “non‑partisan” strong commentary. Funny how those blend right in as high‑level.
From here on, I’ll keep it high‑level too: no debate, no counterpoints, just the “preferred style” everyone seems so comfortable with.
So before I go –
Gas $2.50
Oil Prices down 32%
Black Friday & Cyber Monday blew up
And despite the issues in the CPI report, Wall Street took heart from the data and ended higher today.
I strongly suggest you take a break; maybe have a Snickers bar.
This article deals with potentially partisan manipulation of data that is used to manage the economy.
Try to come back with a clearer mind; please!
Strongly Suggest – OK.
I’m genuinely confused: every single one of my heterodox comments is about partisan manipulation and the economy.
Clear minded, without a Snickers…
And “loving” all the off-topic extreme partisan gold in this thread—communism, voting scandal fan fiction, straight-up autocracy fanboying.
None of it remotely connected to the article and nobody STRONGLY suggesting they take a break. Hmmm.
It will be volatile.
Yeah. When I saw the missing data this morning my stomach kind of sank. You can also slowly see the market piecing this together over the morning.
Reminds me of a painting i recently saw in Detroit, of Tonto and the lone ranger. Tonto says “you lied to me” the lone ranger replied “you better get use to it” :)
Delusion: ‘just find me 11,000 more votes, as I don’t care where you get them’. Trump recorded tellin a prominent Georgia official in 2020.
Come on man, exactly what could anyone expect from a request like that?
Please stop with the political bullshit. Unless you’re willing to talk about CPI specifically, you’re just trolling. Go away.
Looks like we’re surrounded Tonto, but it’s been nice knowing ya.
What you mean white man ?
Just about time for a Elon article.
Would assume telsa is trending similar with beyond meat
Did Alan Greenspan write the BLS’s “explanations “?
Thanks for providing some sanity in a crazy world Wolf! The Chinafication of US economic data is proceeding at an alarming rate 💀 Is the damage to long run economic data permanent or will future analysts be able to run forensics and figure out what REAL real GDP/inflation were during this time period? I assume big banks will be able to keep a reasonable pulse on things so my question is moreso if the general public will ever know.
“…and other inflation adjustments paid to investors and beneficiaries, and they will all be underpaid for inflation.”
I follow this reasoning in the short term. But wouldn’t this be corrected in the other direction within a few months? I.e. all those TIPs, I-bonds, and SSA COLA payments get “made whole” when CPI is smacked back up by the fresh, non approximated data getting absorbed by BLS. It seems like there wouldn’t be sustained impairment, just a blip, no?
That’s assuming no more shutdowns interrupting BLS data collection, which may not be a good bet anymore. That part may not be just a blip and leads us down scary path.
This assumes that there is a will in this administration to produce such inflation data… but today shows that it is not willing to do so. OER is now a three-month-long scandal. I gave them the benefit of the doubt in September. But benefit of the doubt doesn’t last three months.
Reminds me of the nonsense health care adjustment a few years ago. They got away with that so why not this?
Really? You cannot tell the difference?
In the case of the healthcare adjustment, it was clear that they were going to get it right they were just spreading it out to smooth the data. Maybe a political choice, maybe not (I am sure each of our views are biased by our political views), but it is clear they intended to eventually get it right. So far there is nothing to indicate the desire is to eventually get this right.
Why do you think the head of the BLS was fired? Are you that naive?
The health insurance CPI price level is now where it had been March 2019, meaning 0% health insurance inflation since March 2019. Which is obviously total BS.
I have stopped posting these charts because the data is just absurd. Their whole method is BS.
This is one of the reasons why I said some time ago that Trump was doing the right thing firing the commissioner. To put out that kind of index on something that is this important to American is professional malpractice. But Trump should have been more deliberate, he should have cited this health insurance CPI, along with a bunch of other grievances, such as the jobs report’s unreliability.
The “funny” part, Wolf, is the administration will point to that 3 month long (soon to be 6 month or whatever) flatness in the chart as evidence of their success in delivering for the American people.
Exactly. That’s the whole point of this devious exercise!
Americans are easily fooled.
Well, If Wolf is saying the OER has experienced a 3 Month Long Scandal, than that really means something….. ,
At the end of the Day, Americans will feel the true Inflation in there US Dollars buying less, and eventually if not now, the ultimate weakness of the US Dollar Globally ……
A survey when hard data is available?
And who counts, compiles the results of this survey? Lots of room for massaging,
Seems very loose for such an important input.
But with billions at stake, everyone from AARP to institutional TIPs investors to mortgage holders is going to be in court, no?
It’s one thing to cheat retirees and holder of i-bonds, but the financial industry?
“But with billions at stake,”
Trillions, 30 of them.
But I don’t know if you can successfully sue the government over bad data. I’d say a suit like that would get thrown out of court in a New York minute.
Wolf, I’ve read that the BLS is planning some level of changes early next year. Have you read anything about this or general intentions to start reforming how data is collected & analyzed?
And if not, how much longer do you think this scandal can last before it starts to be a real issue for the administration?
For many years, BLS has tried to move from surveys to corporate data and other nonsurvey data. The biggest recent moves that I wrote about were new vehicle and used vehicle price data, which it is buying from JD Power. This switch was made in 2022. BLS also uses some cash-register data for retail purchases, but that’s incomplete, and so it still uses price checkers that go to stores. Government data collection also includes scraping some data from the internet. To move this data to CPI is incredibly complex when you think about the technical details.
What BLS has been talking about is accelerating this switch to nonsurvey data. But that comes with massive technical issues. For example cash register data is sorted by SKUs, but they change all the time due to supplier changes or product tweaks or whatever, and this has to be managed on hundreds of thousands of SKUs and made compatible with the government data base.
Switching to nonsurvey data is a good move. The vehicle CPIs have done very well, and I’ve watched them closely. But it’s a hard move, and government agencies have all kinds of laws and security issues to worry about, and they have to get companies that want to work with them, etc.
In the jobs data, BLS already uses nonsurvey data… it gets the quarterly payroll tax reporting data from the IRS, but it’s quarterly, and there are filing deadlines and extensions, so this data is way behind the monthly survey data. And it’s not complete either. And when BLS benchmarks the monthly survey data once year to the payroll tax data, it triggers these huge revisions.
Not really surprised that Trump is adjusting those numbers to his agenda. Not even surprised if those numbers are stop being released in the near future.
Joe 💯💯
And members of the republican party cheer this on daily, even here in the comment. Cook the books they say! Winning.
Not so fast with the “Trump is adjusting numbers” stuff. This isn’t like his Sharpie markup of the path for Hurricane Whatever a few years ago.
Doubtful he even knows anything about how these numbers are calculated. His people, a “loyalist” in charge made the call. This month is more of an omission that they conveniently let fly than an adjustment. So the time for such accusations is after another month when they’ve had time to get their sh*t together. If it is still 0%, or some unrealistic number, have at it!
Except that you don’t have to know diddly about how the numbers are calculated to know that if you fire the head of the bureau and tell everyone it is because she reported weak numbers that make you look bad, then you are using the power of the president to push hard in the goal-seeking department for numbers that make the president look good, or surely more heads will roll. You only have to know how mafia rules work to know the implied pressure will do its job throughout the department when you take out the biggest person in the department for not delivering what you want to see.
Bingo!
“It would be a shame if that job you are in suddenly went away”…….
I wasn’t threatening, I was just sayin…
BOGUS BINGO.
The firing wasn’t just about weak numbers.
The BLS has relied on outdated methods, questionable data, and endless revisions for decades. Revisions may be routine, but this director delivered back-to-back historically bad reports followed by historic revisions.
Most administrations would accept the status quo. A real leader didn’t. He sent a clear message: ENOUGH.
Democrats responded with a 43-day government shutdown, disrupting data collection, reporting, and other critical deadlines—fearful of more POTUS wins for the American people.
This was never just about the ACA. That’s why they ultimately caved in unison.
Need to get rid of OEM entirely. It’s always been a B.S. number
It does seem suspect. They survey homeowners and ask what they think their home unfurnished would rent for. I have no precise idea what my home would rent for as I am not a renter. Maybe there is more behind it, but it sounds quite fuzzy. My imprecise estimate would not fluctuate based upon anything more than fuzzy feelings.
Indeed. Who know less about what their home would rent for than a home OWNER, many of whom have not even looked at the rental market for years.
Zillow? Redfin?
This is the real answer here. Rental data can be collected so much better by other means.
Agree and why the BLS needed new leadership to implement better methods to gather data and deliver more reliable data.
“most data for October was missing and some data for November was missing, and that it filled in the gaps in the November data, including by “approximating missing data points” with whatever, including [Candace Owens].” ;-)
It’s hard to collect data to produce reports when data collectors are sitting at home during a historic 43-day government shutdown—designed to stall the administration’s momentum, with the ACA serving as camouflage.
Unbelievable but not surprised.
Along those lines but off topic – is anyone getting tired of hearing about how AI is going to take everybody’s jobs and as a result we will no longer need to work; everything will be near free, we will all have a universal high income, and life will be grand? This is coming from some from some prominent tech bros like Elon Musk.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, this sounds a lot like communist propaganda, doesn’t it? Dressed up as a trojan horse with a big AI sticker on it.
From google:
“The concept of a communist utopia is fundamentally tied to the abolition of money…
The core idea is that money, as a medium of exchange and a store of value, would be eliminated. In its place, resources and consumer goods would be freely available to all inhabitants.”
What is the practical difference?
Nothing in this world is free. Nor will it ever be.
While technology can be deflationary, you have the Federal Reserve on the other hand valiantly fighting deflation with every bone in its body.
If AI makes everything free, why do they need so much money?
This AI bubble can’t pop fast enough.
I would recommend different sources. This is not the standard expectation of the impact AI will have. It is also important to realize that communism is an ideology like any other. There may never be communist countries as defined by the ideology. China, for example, is in the transition period called socialism. The fact that they have political parties that are communist does not make them a communist country. On top of that Marxism is a scientific approach where essentially contradictions can bring about change but what that looks like in one country versus another would be very different. The material conditions that bring about societies, their values, and so on very different and essential to understanding current situation and best ways to better material conditions for society. Finland is often an interesting country to contrast on some level.
Rick Vincent?
Huh? First, China has only one party and so for 75 years and it is called the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose constitution demands members fight for communism lifelong. Their so-called stage of socialism is just a term, not a rejection of communism. China is a one-party monopoly, 75 years of CCP rule… and yeah, the word Communist baked right into the ruling party’s name that controls everything. Kinda says it all. and Marxism is the snake oil that always ends in massive loss in life.
Dp,
So this is wrong from top to bottom. Not even going to try to explain something that even CIA world fact book gets correct. If ignorance is bliss then you are in utopia.
Glen – glad to hear your thoughts but the record states –
In practice, despite China’s official label as a socialist state in transition, the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute control ensures that communism prevails in all matters of power, law, and governance.
CIA World Factbook (2025): Describes China as a “communist party-led state.”
Britannica (2025): Lists China as one of the remaining communist states.
U.S. Congressional Research Service and academic consensus: China is classified as a communist state due to its one-party authoritarian system under the CCP.
While China has adopted significant market-oriented economic reforms, its political system remains communist in structure and ideology.
When the massive job losses occur it will be blamed on AI since the humans are being programmed that AI causes job losses.
AI is either good or garbage in garbage out just like all programming, I have yet to believe all the AI hype
Having seen what happens behind the scenes of an AI commercial software running the show; I can say definitely AI will cost a lot of white collar desk jobs.
The AI hype is overstated for sure. And the luddites are delusional. But it is revolutionary, just not end of the world Terminator kind of revolutionary.
I worked for a major freight company a couple years ago that had integrated an AI system and it was utterly mind blowing the capabilities and how profitable we were. I mean the general truck freight market barely eeks out 4% profit margins. Our company was clearing 30% profit margins. The only way was by the AI system. It tracked the profitability of freight every minute and updated the system. There was a single person making sure there weren’t mistakes but the work of 10 people at each yard was reduced to 1 with massive profit increases.
We had trackers on the forklifts making sure the cross door percentage was as low as possible. Less forklifts covering ground, less wages, saves money. If a driver was delivering one pallet out of town and he was on overtime, it would get reassigned to a guy without enough hours for OT. Most guys had variable start times, they’d call you in 3,4,5,6 times a day moving your start time around to fit the systems profitability metrics. You had a time limit for starting and stopping, stops, pickups, drive speed, etc.
The AI system was simply incredible. i’m not doing a great job explaining it but the AI system on the commercial/industrial side is already incredible. Woe be to the paralegals, accountants, middle management, etc. I do expect a massive curtailing of low level white collar work.
Thank you for sharing this experience at a trucking company. I also see how all kinds of companies are implementing AI to improve efficiencies, grow without having to add people, have one person do what several used to do, etc. My industry has been using AI for all kinds of things for years, and has been shedding jobs for years.
Sure, but none of this is new, it’s been going on with automation for decades and AI itself isn’t new, it’s also been around for decades. The problem is the AI bubble hype is conflated with the kinds of AI and automation that have been around for many many years and being implemented anyway. And the problem with the newer AI it it’s far less stable than the older AI, hallucinations actually tend to get worse over time and the models breakdown as they start to take in more of own data.
We’ve seen this time and time again, and companies get in serious trouble when they start over-trusting the AI and laying off staff, and then suddenly, the AI starts breaking down, subtle errors accumulate and the company goes bankrupt. There’s now alarming data that just a tiny number of bad data ingests ruin an AI that’s been trained on literally trillions of pieces of data. So this breakdown inevitable as the AI’s start to take in more of their own, leave alone the issues with all the AI slop messing up quality parts of the Internet and basically getting flooded with bad data. And also remember, AI is heavily subsidized right now and that can’t last, massive losses for all AI companies and worsening debt. And they’ll never be able to raise prices much, because for ex. China will just pump out ever cheaper AI and companies won’t be able to service their debt. So costs in some way will go up and the fancy error prone new AI will not be fiscally viable much longer.
The amount of inefficiencies (and opportunities for improvement) that I see in logistics and shipping is mind-boggling. E.g. two items on the same order going to the same address, but shipped in separate boxes with separate labels.
Trucker guy,
Interesting. Guessing this was also enabled by just expanding on operation management which has been around forever. AI, as it is labeled, just takes this to the next level, being able to integrate so many aspects of the business and then make mostly automated intelligent decisions. No doubt this will just increase wherever possible and the outlook can be either extremely positive or of course the other direction. I think in our country it will be the latter as I just can’t see our society and elected officials being able to respond to it. I will miss it since I am a few years from retirement but very concerning for my kids. So much of our societies safety nets and so on were built on certain assumptions and while those didn’t change overnight there still has been no action to address them other than cutting them.
Absolutely ridiculous that something so crucial to the country, like collecting all that data, was interrupted by the shutdown. The way TSA, military, etc. sectors continued to work without pay, the same should have been applied to those services, which also could be considered national security.
Yes. Or, how about just keep the lights on and workers at their desks and everyone getting paid? They caved anyways.
Well… the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was fired by President Donald Trump in August 2025, hours after the release of a weaker-than-expected jobs report. Guess it’s like running a casino in Atlantic City, except the chips are USD1 stable coins.
There are active long-term lease contracts, i.e. utility solar on farmland, that have a CPI rider.
Well, actually he was fired more so because of the massive revision a sign of ever increasing incompetence in the BLS leadership to right the ship on garnering such important data and the buck stops at the top. As MILO says above the data so important it could be considered national security so why would we keep allowing for such horrible gathering and reporting of data. Strong leadership requires results.
We probably won’t get any “REAL” inflation reports till February, and that too maynot be “REAL”! 😱
We probably won’t get a “real” inflation report for at least another 36 months.
I’d say at least until after the midterms.
By February there may be another government shutdown.
Dont forget, there is a good chance of another govt shutdown in January
Off the top of my head math, if we use the 6 month average for OER instead of the outlier data, then November overall CPI is more likely around 3.3% than the reported 2.7%? Correct me if that is wrong.
Seems concerning.
I’m still seeing a number of articles about the increasing cost of home ownership.
This morning’s was about a 26% increase in the water/ sewer rates in a northern Colorado area.
We also know that insurance renewal rates have increased, along with property tax rates.
Obviously this is hard to quantify, with any amount of data. Even more so with made up data.
On the other hand I saw a visualization of the number of states in “recession” (or at high risk). The data was as of October, and I don’t know the methodology (source was stated as Moody’s).
The graphic indicated that only 16 states had clear economic expansion. The data was further explained by each state’s share of GDP, by percentage.
Many alarm bells; for what? We’re unsure.
You can’t act on incorrect or nonexistent data. Now ask yourself why they wouldn’t want you to react?
Recession.
My county just approved a 12% raise in property tax, which is less than the original proposed increase. One more item in home ownership costs.
Nov. is a spike.
FWIW the street estimate was for it to come in today at 3.0%- 3.1%. So the 2.7% was a major shock and of course Wall Street rallied because the free money punchbowl seems to be coming back.
Serious Question:
Can we trust any of the data?
The data is not all that good, but my gut feels we are in deep dodo.
At least I don’t have to listen to all the crap about tbill and chill! A certain path to poverty.
“At least I don’t have to listen to all the crap about tbill and chill! A certain path to poverty.”
Do you really prefer a SP 500 (with extreme top-heaviness) trading at a 30+ PE – when the long term historical PE is 15?
At least TBills are yielding something markedly above basically zero now…that could not really be said from 2011-2022.
The historical P/E does not matter. The economy worked different then. The automation of the financial industry was different then. The planning was different then. The government can no doubt see the bubble and has no intent of letting it mean anything — no intent of any reversion to the mean.
They saw the system fail multiple times. They’ve been working out the kinks better and better with every attempt.
> The historical P/E does not matter
If you believe this then you believe earnings don’t matter for stock valuation. They often don’t in a bubble during speculative episodes but once liquidity is removed through some event, earnings are critical for stock valuation.
> The automation of the financial industry was different then. The planning was different then
You’re arguing “it’s different this time”. Human psychology has not changed at all and is the primary driver of bubbles including this one.
> The government can no doubt see the bubble and has no intent of letting it mean anything
The longer the government supports the bubble the worse the eventual crash will be due to how human behavior creates extreme levels of risk taking when risk is free creating a very vulnerable market.
> They’ve been working out the kinks better and better with every attempt.
This part is nonsense, the government does not have the ability to control the majority of market crash events. As an example, if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow the market would implode and nothing any western country would do financially would remediate the issue in any short period. There are many potential critical crash events like this outside of the control of governments, the longer the bubble is sustained the worse such a crash will be when a triggering event occurs.
This time is not different.
Bawbler is right there Mr. Regard – kinda HIGH LEVEL if you know what I mean.
S&P 500 up roughly 15% YTD —solid gains through all the noise you’ve been amplifying.
Trailing P/E around 27-28—elevated but forward P/E ~22.5, baking in expected 12% earnings growth for 2025 and 14%+ in 2026. That’s not speculation; it’s AI turning massive capex into real revenue and productivity. Thus why POTUS so big on bragging on the big tech investments and international capex drops.
And earnings—they’re accelerating, with analysts forecasting double-digit EPS jumps ahead, driven by actual tech adoption, not just hype.
Fed and policymakers have better tools now than in past crises. Shocks get managed without total meltdowns. QT & QE aren’t just dart tosses with today’s tools just get Powell out of there.
Human nature drives swings, no doubt—greed and fear always do. But this isn’t blind euphoria; it’s backed by a genuine productivity shift that’s justifying higher multiples.
Calling “crash imminent” every time valuations stretch has been a rough trade for years. U.S. innovation keeps winning, markets keep grinding higher. Sure dips will happen = shopping time.
China/Taiwan – come on, really. China has more to lose than we do on that mistake.
I’ll stay long and compound thank you.
It’s different this time ! LOL
Approximating such important data, which so happens to favor the administration’s narrative is peak corruption. The United States should not be doing this.
Thank you Wolf for your relentless explanations. You remain the voice of reason for many.
Hi Wolf,
Our BoE today cut rates by another 25 basis points..
Do you believe home prices are falling Wolf? How about rents?
T K – Goes along with the housing bubble data. OER data is following the long-term trend back to the end of 2022. There were three similar points prior to the previous spike.
I agree all of the data we get is questionable, but this doesn’t seem any more out of line than anything else we are being fed.
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/12/16/the-most-splendid-housing-bubbles-in-america-price-drops-gains-in-33-large-expensive-metros-in-november-2025/
The pitfalls of an increasingly autocratic state. But Trump at least got his headline. Those commentators on Fox News cheer it, proof of the recovery from 2024.
Trump currency, Trump crypto currency, Trump businesses engaging in M&A activity in government funded sectors, The Kenned Center is now the Trump-Kennedy Center. All on the same day recordings of Trump telling Georgia to overturn its democratic election is released.
I know, all very political. But this is not normal times we live in. These statistics completely lack any reliability. The bond market will be very much impacted as it sinks in. Even moreso as he desperately tries to reshape the fed next year, likely angry at rates not falling, ignorant that it is his own actions causing issues.
Maybe if the government wasn’t funding the economy with a deficit of 6-7% a year we wouldn’t have the inflationary pressures we do now (many parties to blame for this one).
This is the new normal. You need to adjust and plan accordingly.
Agree with you there. Based on today’s news I’ll need to get into Nuclear Fusion.
During the primetime speech last night he as much said that about the change of the Federal Reserve. I suppose we see rates dropping in the next quarter…bigly. Enough time to put jet fuel into the stock market as he said oh so long ago. May we see better days in the future
I don’t get what their plan is. Does he think inflation is a myth?
Blame the inflation problem entirely on Biden (I agree his spending plans exacerbated it but come on), then stoke it yet again.
If they planned to raise taxes you could argue for it. There’s no way they can hit spending more without axing either Medicaid or Defence, neither of which they can (or should) do.
All madness. There’s no longer even a hint of logic, just untethered populism. How do all the so called fiscal conservatives still back this?
Fiscal Conservative here – Yes, you seemingly don’t get it (not just this post) but you have company.
It’s remarkable how many people react to the economy as if it were a single number on a scoreboard or one report thrown off by the opposition.
Macroeconomics is a complex system of moving parts—fiscal policy, monetary policy, labor markets, productivity, global shocks, and supply chains—all operating on different timelines.
Short-term fluctuations like inflation prints or stock market swings don’t happen in isolation.
Things like capital investment, and consumer confidence move more slowly, but they tell the real story of whether the economy is strengthening.
Ignoring these trends in favor of immediate headlines isn’t insight—it’s reacting to noise without understanding the game being played.
As they say it’s chess not checkers and POTUS plays chess.
Great article. Very informative and probably not something I’d find anywhere else on this.
After firing the BLS commissioner for supposedly suspect data, I often wonder if the administration wanted the shut down just to keep the CPI and labor data from showing real trends that don’t fit their narrative to lower interest rates. The problem with this approach is that it’s no different than the transitory stance of the Biden administration.
Unemployment is hitting near 5%. That is 1 in 20 people. And based on the numbers we have seen this trend is increasing. I now know three people in my circle out of work. Last night at dinner my friend who works in mortgages told me that he is one deal away from declaring bankruptcy. I see strain in the system
5% unemployment is still outstanding, from an historical perspective. It’s a good enough number to fuel inflation.
The issue with a creeping higher unemployment rate is it’s usually hard to stop the creeping up!
The is no 5% number in trend YoY stop lying.
Except that Americans working 1 or 2 hours driving Uber aren’t counted as unemployed, nor are they if they stop looking which many do. A 5% unemployment number on the headline underestimates how bad the job market is and how difficult cost-of-living is for Americans, even without manipulation. Prime US labor force participation isn’t that great, and again it doesn’t account for people making pocket money from gigs.
Nathan
Many small businesses have never recovered from the covid lock downs.
The guy is corrupt beyond belief. What’s really bad is I suspected this would happen. I’ve been watching it closely since the fabricated charges against Lisa Cook because she voted to not cut this past summer, along with others, of course. Trump is a very dangerous, unhinged man. Never thought I’d see this in America. Three more years of this tin pot dictator, if we make it out alive.
There were lots of problems before Trump’s first term. Globalization and large corporate favoratism left many folks behind. Both parties were complicit.
My post said nothing about the previous administration being perfect, and your comment is irrelevant in this context. My comment was about the fabrication of this CPI report. Both parties had nothing to do with the fabrication of this report. This administration did. Anytime someone mentions something about Trump, someone always gets defensive. If you point out the facts against Trump, you must be a democrat. I’m tired of that. I’m non partisan. The fact are the facts. This administration manipulated the report. It’s corrupt and very dangerous.
Not arguing but wasn’t Lisa Cook one of the more dovish Fed members? Quite an irony. And now Trump is getting visibly nervous about inflation and unaffordability, and and putting a lot of pressure on institutions to bring down costs. Even he knows he can’t hide how expensive things are getting for Americans when they have to pay the bills, so not even sure he’s staying with his push for lower interest rates.
He seems to flip back and forth based on flavor of the month and whatever new thing he hears about or is told, and he’s apparently being told that the low Fed interest rates are fuelling inflation that he fears most, and higher rates (like Volcker did) are better at combatting inflation down. So who even knows, he might well pivot back to berating the Fed for keeping rates too low, raise them like Paul Volcker choke off inflation. Seems in a lot of ways he’s already going in that direction.
“wasn’t Lisa Cook one of the more dovish Fed members”
No, she always voted with the majority, including for all rate hikes, starting with her first FOMC meeting in June 2022, when she voted for the massive 75-basis-point hike (raising the upper end of the target range to 1.75% from 1.0%), and she voted for all other 75-basis-point, 50-basis-point, and 25-basis point rate hikes that came after that all the way up to 5.5% by July 2023. There were some dissents along the way who wanted smaller rate hikes, but not Cook.
Here is her first FOMC meeting with the 75-basis-point hike, which she voted for, and which drew one dissent (by Esther George) who wanted only a 50-basis-point hike.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20220615a.htm
This is EXACTLY what I thought would eventually happen – straight up lying about and hiding inflation by manipulating CPI data. This country is finished as we ever knew it.
Depth charge: If they serve up a big fat shit sandwich they believe calling it a yummy steak sandwich repeatedly will make people believe the shit sandwich is just wonderful. Did you see how the market responded today? There’s the proof! All good now. Move along, nothing to see here. Buy buy buy!
The problem with lying about inflation while hiding the real data is that nobody believes it because their money is disappearing faster and faster. Gaslighting the American people, telling them “inflation is gone” while it is still raging, doesn’t work.
I think it is working. In France they would be setting cars on fire and rioting in the streets. In the US we spending money like crazy on imported goods from China.
Gee. I had to buy a solenoid and the ATV shop quoted me $60. Paid $10 on Amazon. Should I have burned down the Polaris dealer?
Depth
Inflation is a widely dispersed cost (to workers and savers) to the concentrated benefit of a few (asset holders)
Asset holders also get whacked by inflation. Their hope is that the yield of their assets or the price increases of their assets will be higher than inflation over time. When asset prices decline, asset holders get hit twice: by price declines and by inflation.
Only thing worse than the doctored CPI numbers is the doctored media reporting on the doctored CPI numbers instead of calling out the BS
Well said, and what I was thinking too. They all took these bogus numbers and reported on them like stenographers. Why reading WS is so important.
Stocks up, VIX down, gold down…quite the day for the efficient markets hypothesis.
Not suggesting accurate and relevant data is not valuable but the definition of relevant as well as accurate can shift. Even if we had those things it doesn’t mean logical decisions will be made, or more decisions that seek to solve one crisis only to create another one don’t happen. Despite some positive signs recently, which unclear how well those will bear fruit, the headwinds are much more relevant and concerning. I’m a realist and not a doomer but it is hard to point to a significantly brighter tomorrow. I suppose that is why people gain comfort in comparisons to Argentina or France.
Wolf, I understand your concerns about the missing data, and particularly the OER being kept flat at an artificially low number, but considering data collection didn’t restart until half-way through November, what would you have done in the alternative? Other than not coming out with a number at all, what numbers should they have used?
I mean, at least try to get the best estimate you can. 3mo average? 6mo average? Fit a trend line? Pull some similar data from private sources?
Yeah, it’s an impossible job to get it exactly right, but don’t use a value that 100% with absolute certainty drastically underestimates reality.
I gave them the benefit of the doubt in September. Now it’s three months of the same thing, and the benefit of the doubt left the chatroom.
I will reverse my judgement if next month, they come out with huge revisions for September and and November and show December in the normal range. But that would turn CPI red hot. That’s the acid test.
Wolf, what happened for the Value for Motor Vehicle Insurance for November 2025 ? i don’t see it there or on BLS .
There is no data for October at all and only incomplete data for November. Motor Vehicle Insurance is one of the missing data points in November.
Wolf, But on the BLS Spreadsheet, all other Categories have Data for November 2025, except Motor Vehicle Insurance…. , This is the Only one not showing Data for November 2025….. ,
Considering Motor Vehicle Insurance has been the Category that has had the Highest Increase of Inflation over the last 5 Years in the CPI ….
Motor vehicle insurance, as you said, surged through 2024, but then flattened out this year and dropped in September (my GEICO premium followed the same path). I don’t think the index would have made a big move over the past three months.
Great Point Wolf. No Workers to do surveys = no data to report.
Consequences of record 43 day government shutdown.
Why is our government, one of the largest employers in the world with seemingly endless “cash” to burn using so many damn surveys! WTF. We can’t do better? How about have AI calculate real numbers for everything? I mean, it’s all knowing game changing revolutionary savior isn’t it? Too hard to fudge then?
We are one of the largest employers because of our population. If you compare as a percentage we are under the average of developed countries, often significantly (50% or more). There are of course reasons for that but the generalization that we have too many people in government is probably more related to value add versus total numbers. There is very little we don’t privatize here relative to a country like Finland, who if we had a comparative percent in government we would need to hire 24 million more people. Apples and oranges but a better measure would be what services do we get for our money and number of employees in government.
What was miscalculated was the lowest comfortable level of reserves (LCLoR). It was too high and so is inflation.
In other words, Wolf, we can’t trust a F-ing thing that the g-mint puts out. Might as well be cranking out horse crap! This was my brain’s AI summary of your article. Bottom line – it’s getting MUCH more expensive to live.
Beyond having “real” data, whatever that means, inflation has a personal connection.
If I am an older married gent who owns my home outright, housing costs do not affect me to the degree they do a younger couple. However, if my Medigap policy premium rises, I would feel that.
In some ways, Seniors feel inflation differently than a single person or a young family.
Finally, in many cases, a senior has a fixed income, which complicates an inflationary period.
I am that younger couple. The rising insurance costs are shredding my budget. And I’m talking about 50-60% increases.
The Bureau of Labor Bullsh_t strikes again. I have always questioned the numbers coming from government agencies and have been scorned by our illustrious webmaster Wolf. His current fine article points out some obvious bs. I would worry more about what we don’t know. CPI and jobs numbers drive much of how people deal with the economy. What if the numbers are based for the most part on bullsh_t?
Some academics with some integrity (if there are any) and good protection should do a thorough review of the quality and short-comings of the government generated inflation and jobs data.
What you don’t want to do is just make up stuff that suits your narrative every time you see data. You need to look at the data and see if there is something wrong with it. And you cannot go from your personal experiences because this is a huge country with 340 million people, and everyone has different personal experiences.
But if the data is incomplete, inaccurate, made up, or whatever ?
Then what ?
I know I will never be rich, but I do everything I can to support my narrative of not becoming dirt poor.
PS… your articles seem to help cut through the crap though.
Also, personal experience and things that a person can see with their own eyes in real-time can be considered useful “additional” real data.
Especially in times like this, when the “Official Data” might be less accurate than what a person is seeing in real life.
If you get an 8% rent hike, it’s between your landlord and you. Maybe he is ripping you off, and you should move, or he wants you out of the unit so that he can remodel it and rent it for more. These are individual decisions. If you get an 8% rent hike (when was the last rent hike you got?), while oversupply is causing rents to flatten out or fall, and you extrapolate your 8% rent hike out to the overall national rents (while rents in many markets are flattening out or falling), thinking that overall rents are rising by 8%, then you’re polluting your brain with BS.
Ok…
I am smelling what you are stepping in now.
The summation, or at least an adequate sample size, of people smelling sh_t should translate into the government numbers. I am increasingly unsure that this happens. Trump already fired the head of the BLS (may be justified, or not), and he will replace Powell in May with one of his flunkies. This is overt politization. Maybe it was always like that, but it seems more obvious now. Rather than picking the best and most qualified, Trump is picking the ones who will kiss his heinie. Not a good look.
I love how “real” the OER chart looks with three perfectly flat nice and low dots. I wonder if the low CPI will continue or if there is a nasty upside surprise looming.
I was listening to Bloomberg when they read 2.7% and I couldn’t believe it- it looks like my initial gut instinct was correct. But the 10-year treasury bond has dropped ~ 8 basis points since hitting 4.20 briefly last week. Bond vigilantes, where are you?
Bond vigilantes have to ask themselves which asset class is more overvalued – stocks, RE, or bonds?
Does it make sense to sell long bonds in order to put money in stocks or RE? Probably not. Also, long bond holders could reduce duration, but then they’d be taking on reinvestment risk in a declining ST rate environment.
It’s not an easy call.
The smart bond investors were hedging with gold and silver.
“‘There is no world in which this is a good idea, but here we are,’ said Omair Sharif, president of Inflation Insights LLC.”
Nominated as my favorite out-of-context quote of the day from Bloomberg, in reference to the assumptions made in the housing component. These words can also be applied to any other single event in the US during [Project] 2025.
Great analysis of the CPI data – as usual. More stories are now appearing in the financial press questioning the veracity of the data based on the carry-forward of stale and potentially suspect data.
Quick reminder, not quite full one year in yet and we’re here…..still 3 more years to go..best case scenario and worse case could be much longer…
Good times…
AP: Govt says inflation ‘eased’ but data may be distorted and Americans aren’t feeling it…
Always read both the article and comments to sort of stay balanced. Here I kept expecting to see a rant about tariffs but alas I’m disappointed.
It seems I read something about our trade is now moving towards balance. Any clarification from anyone?
Far from “balanced” but imports have plunged in recent months and exports are up, and so the trade deficit has shrunk to the lowest in years. But it’s still huge. Companies are having a very hard time passing on any additional costs, including tariffs.
Tariff is not causing inflation problem. Money supply is causing it.
No, money supply is not causing any inflation issues at all.
The U.S.’s largest trade deficits are consistently with China, followed by Mexico, Vietnam, and the EU, driven by massive imports of manufactured goods, electronics, and automobiles, with the overall deficit hitting a record over $1.2 trillion in 2024. China remains the single biggest imbalance, though gaps with Mexico and Vietnam have grown as supply chains shift.
I have the solution for everything, Wolf! We’re about to seize the country of Venezuela and their oil. Note: many do not know this about oil – Venezuela has the world’s lLARGEST proven reserves of oil, however one chart I referenced listed them as the 12th largest oil producer, another one as the 18th largest. Amazing and crazy at the same time. We can heist their oil, and have free gasoline for everyone here in the U.S. and sell it to all other countries. Free stuff for everyone! Problem solved. Goodbye inflation. Talk about a petro-dollar! it would be like taking a trip to Hawaii -“ I’m going to Venezuela, the 51st state.”
By ‘we’ I assume you mean USA.
As a petro-state with a virtually unlimited supply of natural gas, why would ‘we’ be interested in Venezuela’s oil?
Sweet Baby Ray,
The key about Venezuela isn’t how much oil they have(although relevant) but the type of oil they have. I think so often oil is overly generalized and the type they have is key as it is heavy sour, which while others have it such as Canada, Mexico, Middle East and even some in US gulf. Not like another US war related to energy supplies under the guise of getting rid of drugs or a dictator or whatever would be unexpected.
My rent is still increasing 8%/yoy like clockwork, so I, and many other Californians, obviously think the shelter inflation is wrong.
PS They had the nerve to make the not seasonally adjusted CPI a negative number, month over month!
In San Francisco, rents had peaked in 2015 and then actually fell fairly deeply for years, and only recently have come back up to the 2015 high and exceed it. Rents are falling in many parts of the overbuilt cities in the South (FL, TX, etc.). Every market is different. Your rent means zero on the national scale.
The BOJ raised its benchmark and it was noted that inflation has exceeded their “target rate” for 44 months in a row.
My quick calculations came up with the US beating that…….54 consecutive months (June of 2021 to Nov 2025)
BOJ raises rates
Fed cuts
any financial journalist notice?
LOL, what did the BOJ raise TO? 0.75%, from 0.5%. With inflation at 3%. You gotta be out of your mind to compare the BOJ favorably to the Fed. The Fed may be bad, but nothing like the BOJ.
No favorable comparison. I drew no conclusion.
Actually damning both for how long they have allowed inflation.
Only noting how long both central banks have been over their alleged targets.
Also noting what one bank decided to do while over their target, while another, in the same condition did the opposite. (rate differences acknowledged)
It is a joke that they refer to something as a “target” (both banks) but then persistently ignore it.
Zillow’s data suggests that a proxy-based approach to market rents would currently show higher inflation pressure than the official BLS measure, which lags.
1. All private-sector rent metrics use “asking rents.” That’s the only info they have. Asking rents are just what landlords want for their vacant not-yet rented units. Tenants don’t pay asking rents that change daily. Tenants pay actual rents, and the CPI for rent (not OER) tracks actual rent paid by all tenants, including in rent-controlled units.
2. Zillow’s own rent index is flat year-over-year.
Yes, the Sept OER number looks suspect, but the August one was much hotter than Zillow forecast, so clearly some noise in the MTM data. YOY OER was still up 3.4%, so supporting CPI; if you throw this out completely, CPI net of Shelter was only up 2.6 % (per BLS table 3). Just read a NBER article discussing the huge lags in collecting rental data. My friends in RE say most asking rents don’t take into account concessions (discounts) needed to get new tenants (so closer to flat, as Wolf states above). Who knows why owners surveyed for OER are reporting higher prices, when the housing price data reported in this week’s article clearly shows levels coming down (I just substantially lowered the asking price on a property I’m trying to sell, based upon this compelling data). Anyway, it is very reasonable to forecast CPI Shelter inflation coming substantially DOWN over 2026 (as Zillow does), based in lagged effects of collecting rental cost data, which should support further rate cuts. Also hard to imagine Energy costs remaining up 4.2% YOY, with Oil and Gas significantly down, expect this to roll over.
With Trumps loyalty over competence, you can bet interest rates will be coming down significantly next year, no matter what. I wonder what Powell will do, or say in his remaining time with all this fake data. He’ll be threatened and berated I’m sure. Will he be fired? Possibly.
Which interest rates? The five that the Fed directly controls? Maybe. All the other ones? Seems unlikely. I think that’s a bad bet.
As has been observed by our host, the last six Fed policy rate reductions have been curiously correlated to nudges up in the long term interest rates that they don’t control, e.g. the 10 year note, mortgages, etc. I haven’t noticed the return of 4%-5% 30-year mortgage rates since the Fed lopped off almost 2% from their policy rates starting about a year ago.
Maybe the bond vigilantes have been slowly waking up. And maybe with the new uncertainly about CPI calculations raised in this article they’re teed up to feel that first jolt of caffeine from their morning cup of joe.
Mistaking control of reporting for true control of the reality.
Keep trading those coupons. Reality is going to really hit hard in the next decade. The world really started going off the rails in January 2020. We just didn’t know it.
What I find comical is how many people are selling the precious, because it’s just another bubble. Instead, we should ask why people are not buying over the counter, to try and get ahead of even more inflation?
Maybe one should ask if the dollar is a bubble, and inflation is just the future constant erosion of any value versus a much more consistent exportable or portable wealth.
This entire economy is based on growing, but if growth is simply inflation, not real things contributing to real lives, then what? Look at the destruction of wealth in commercial real estate. Epic.
If we stop exporting grain, 30% of our farms are surplus. How about ethanol? Now, ship out 15 million people, how many empty houses and schools? We are doing a real time experiment with international tourism and just watch next year’s soccer games.
Jimmying numbers is the least of our worries. We now sail uncharted seas, and rocks abound. The only question is what rock we crash into first?
Always remember that eCONomics is a SOCIAL “science” not a hard science.
Wolf is keeping track of the last traces of a dying republic where transparency, integrity, and true price discovery used to reign. Not anymore. Judging by some of the comments it would seem many of you are getting assets out of the U.S. system…
Interesting times.
Sudden 60% drop for stock darling sends shockwaves through Wall Street as bubble fears grow
In just six weeks, the tech company has seen about $33 billion evaporate – sending a chill through the entire AI trade.
One of Wall Street’s AI darlings is turning into a nightmare for investors.
In just six weeks, CoreWeave — a tech company most consumers have never heard of — has shed 60 percent of its stock value, wiping out about $33billion in paper wealth.
That’s sending a chill through the entire AI trade. Wall Street had already been on edge about a potential investment bubble.
Not so fast, LOL. CoreWeave +16% today.
trying to dig into OER
:Specifically about OER: “BLS calculates rent and owners’ equivalent rent using six-month panel collection [surveys are sent to the same address every six months, instead of every month].
which month of the year do they do the OER survey?
if only went up .13 % in September, is that based on a new set of 6-month survey data or not? Thanks
They do the survey every month, but they rotate who gets the survey so that each address on the huge panel gets the survey twice a year.
Wolf…
(off topic)
I read that J P Morgan has been a big user of the SRF.
Is it possible that participant’s identity would be revealed?
IF JPM is a big user, that would be a good thing. It would be a bad thing if JPM refused to use the SRF. The purpose of the SRF is that the primary dealers that have access to it use it to calm turmoil in the repo market. And they did. So if JPM helped do that, it would be a good sign.
Can an approved participant in the SRF use the money for their own purposes rather than lend out in SOFR?
Sure. Banks borrow to lend. That’s their business. they can lend to the repo market overnight, either using their own reserves (which are now much lower after three years of QT) or by borrowing overnight at the SRF and lending the funds to the repo market if those repo rates are higher than SRF rates due liquidity issues.
And that’s exactly what they did. SRF balances shot up during the repo turmoil (quarter end and month end) and then settled back down to zero. They have been zero since Dec 3, except for two days.
95% confidence means the estimate will fall outside the confidence interval 1 out of 20 times.
It is clear that our political system is broken. So much bias in comments, so much blame–my party, your party.
The only solution is to rise against the Republican and Democrat narrative and realize that the real enemy is the rich. They are Republican and Democrat, and they want your wages.
I could not have agreed any more with you on this.
But the problem is, we are a two party system which takes turns to pillage this country and make sure people remain divided.
I am puzzled by this. November rent/OER survey data was collected. Granted it probably has large error bars given the short time available to collect. So Nov 2024-Nov 2025 rent/OER data (YOY) is available. So is Sep 2025-Nov 2025 data (bimonthly). Why does this have to contaminate rent/OER CPI going forward? Is this BLS not taking the initiative to make a reasonable interpolation, estimation, adjustment because they are afraid of getting fired, or because they have and are sticking to published policies for handling missing data?
The September number was a complete and total outlier. And they just extrapolated the outlier forward to November. Looks at the index numbers I provided in the article for Aug-Nov and figure the month-to-month changes from them. you’ll see. That’s what the chart shows.
Agree with John the focus should be on YOY figures; they’ve (OER) been relatively stable: June 3.8, July, 3.7, August (when monthly spiked up) 3.6, Sept (when it spiked down) STILL 3.6, Oct n/a, Nov 3.4%. If you believe housing prices and rents are trending down, albeit with a lag, so should OER. Meanwhile the overall CPI x Shelter (basically OER + actual rents) has actually increased from June’s 2.0 to Nov’s 2.6 (actually peaked in Sept at 2.7). At least some of the recent rise has been due to an unexpected (unexplained ?) rise in Energy from June’s negative .8 % YOY to Nov’s 4.2 % !! In both Sept and Nov the MOM numbers were 1.5% – try annualizing those rates and compare to recent energy commodity prices. You can pick and choose and find collection errors in monthly data everywhere, but YOY smooths much of this out an (IMO) inflation is legitimately coming down.
LOOK AT THE CHART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You people post this stuff without having a clue what the OER ACTUALLY did. So look at the frigging chart of the OER.
YOY just waters down the last three month-to-month figures by including the prior 9 month-to-month figures. It’s the last three months that went totally awry. Look at the friggin chart.
that spending on data centers through August reached an annualized rate of $41 billion, up a whopping 2,200% since 2014 — putting it on track to overtake the amount spent on private office construction. As we shed excess office space (a shockwave still reverberating from the pandemic), and a growing number of power-guzzling, water-wanting data centers suck up every spare investment dollar and watt of electricity we have, we can make our easiest prediction yet: these lines are going to cross.
Thanks a lot WR for bring this doctored data to the front end. I never really trusted Govt data and I believe data of all kind would be doctored to fit in the given narrative.
I wish you and your readers a very happy Holidays and Merry Christmas if you celebrate.
It is dissapointing when you have some invested in inflation bonds, but people need to feel the consequences of voting for unhinged deficit spending done by both of the two main parties on the ballot. Libertarian is the only choice with the goal of a balanced budget.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments will continue to get their checks on time, as Social Security is funded differently and deemed essential. I WONDER WHY THE GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN ECONOMIC DATA COLLECTION. Ok, boys, let me have it because I must be missing something in regard to Gov`t priorities.
Hoped this site was one where there could be a discussion of the actual data. DID look at the chart and read the entire article (also study full BLS release charts). I agree the 1.6% 3mo annualized figure is unsustainably low, but also believe the prior, 4.1 % average is high relative to what actual inflationary pressures are (due to collection lags) and where we are going. As such, think Fed has room to further reduce short rates. Also think that 99% of inflation reporting/discussions are based upon 12 month (YOY) figures, though did notice Hasset highlighting the 3 mo figure yesterday, which I thought was unusual, concerted and unnecessary – I just didn’t give it much credibility. Would be interesting to hear WR’s expectations for OER in 2026. Zillow (post Nov CPI report) projects OER at 2.2% and RPR at 1.1 % (by 11/26), which would be supportive of 2% overall CPI. That’s the point I was trying to make.
What you’re confusing is ASKING RENTS with actual rent paid by tenants. All private-sector rent indices track asking rents. Asking rents are a landlord wish list for their vacant units on the market. When a landlord prices their unit too high and it sits on the market for two months, that’s the unit that goes into asking rents. When a landlord prices a unit aggressively and it’s gone within 12 hours, that unit may never get picked up by asking rent algos.
The two CPIs that cover rents attempt to track actual rents paid by existing tenants. CPI rent does so directly, and OER is an approximation of it and they track close together.
And you can see that in the data: Zillow’s national rent index (ZORI) spiked in 2021 and by Feb 2022 peaked at +16% YoY. But actual rent that existing tenants actually paid on their rental apartments and houses never ever rose that much because tenants don’t get rent increases every month based on a landlord’s wish list. They get rent increases on their renewal dates, and those rent increases were much smaller. That created a very high base for asking rents that was far above actual rents. Asking rents have been coming off that very high base.
I have posted this explanation here many times, in nearly all my monthly CPI articles, but you’re new here, so OK. The chart shows the ZORI % YOY (red), the CPI Rent and the CPI OER, all % YOY. You can see the fallacy of your argument: asking rent increases are NOT actual rent increases and do NOT become actual rent increases.
Also note that the CPI rent (actual rents paid by tenants) didn’t dive like OER did. It showed a steady increase of 3.8% yoy since September, though that was a smaller increase than before. The monthly CPI rent (not shown) has been in zigzagging around the 3% line for the past six months.
It’s not my job to argue with every internet meme. I’ve got other things to do, articles to write, etc. This argument ends here.
“When a landlord prices a unit aggressively and it’s gone within 12 hours”
Just wondering if there is any economic convention on “aggressive”.
IE, does “aggressive” make the deal happen faster, of does it make more money?
Or is it used both ways, and just a matter of the context the writer chooses?
I’m also trying to relate this to “animal spirits”, FWIW.
Interesting that property taxes, real estate fees, most maintenance, and all improvement costs are not treated as consumption items. These non-consumption costs of owned housing are out of scope for the CPI .
This reminds me of the PCE that allows substitutions for items that have increased in price too much.
Both point to biased lower inflation readings IMO