FST1A

  When the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that US consumer prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to September 2026, that single number hid a split story. Gasoline was up 34.2% from a year earlier. Shelter was up 3.2%. Food was up 2.5%. Core prices, which leave out food and energy, were up 2.6%. The headline is not an average of those percentages. It is a weighted average, and the weights explain most of the confusion about inflation. All figures in this post come from the BLS Consumer Price Index release for September 2026 (USDL-26-1574, published October 14, 2026), unless noted otherwise. The basket is spending, not a shopping list The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) tracks the prices of a fixed basket of goods and services that urban households buy for day-to-day living: food, clothing, shelter, fuels, transportation, medical care, and more. It covers urban consumers, who make up over 90% of the US population. People living in rural nonmetropolitan are...

Every month, one jobs report produces a dozen different headlines. The way to cut through them is to read five things together: payroll growth against its recent trend, the unemployment rate, revisions to earlier months, which industries actually moved, and what happened to wages, hours, and participation. The September 2026 report is a good practice case: employers added 29,000 jobs, the unemployment rate sat at 4.2%, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) described both as having "changed little." The headline alone says almost nothing. The details say much more. All figures below come from the BLS Employment Situation release for September 2026 (USDL-26-1549), published October 2, 2026, and are seasonally adjusted. Two surveys, one release The jobs report is really two surveys published together. The household survey asks people about their work status and produces the unemployment rate. The establishment survey asks employers about payrolls and produces the nonfarm payr...