vs Last Month
−0.05 pts
Tiny step lower. Core moves in small increments month-to-month.
CPI ex Food & Energy · YoY
Today's Core CPI
3.40
%
-0.05 pts
vs. last month (0.00%)
Past 12 months
Range 3.20 – 3.95
Headline CPI3.10%
vs Last Year-0.40
2022 Peak6.66%
Core inflation eased to 3.40%, the lowest reading since spring 2024 — but still 140 basis points above the Fed's preferred level. With shelter doing most of the lifting, the last leg to 2% will be the hardest.
Historical trend
Monthly year-over-year core inflation. Mid-month BLS release.
Source: FRED · CPILFESL · Year-over-year % change.
The long view: since 1958
Sixty-eight years of core inflation. The 70s/80s tower above everything else.
Peak 13.60% · June 1980
Trough 0.60% · Aug 2010
Today 3.40% · May 13, 2026
How today stacks up
Today's 3.40% core in context.
vs Last Year
−0.40 pts
Steady disinflation continuing through 2026.
5-Year Average
4.20%
Includes the 2022 surge. Today is 80 bps below the average.
vs Headline CPI
+0.30 pts
Core is sticker than headline — shelter and services do that.
Use this number
Tools for navigating sticky inflation.
About Core CPI
Core CPI is the year-over-year percent change in the Consumer Price Index, excluding food and energy. Stripping out those two volatile categories — gasoline can swing 30% in a quarter, grocery prices move with weather and supply shocks — produces a steadier read on the underlying inflation trend. Fed officials, bond traders, and Wall Street economists watch this number far more closely than headline CPI because it's a cleaner signal of where inflation is actually headed.
Why core inflation usually lags
The big categories driving Core CPI are shelter (about 40% of the index, including owners' equivalent rent), medical care, and services ex energy. These prices are "sticky" — landlords reprice leases once a year, insurance contracts renew annually, wage-driven services adjust slowly. So when inflation surges, core lags headline upward; when inflation falls, core takes longer to come down. That lag is why the Fed kept rates elevated through 2024–25 even after headline inflation fell to the low 3s — core was still stuck near 3.5%.
What today's core reading means
At 3.40%, core inflation is roughly 90 basis points above where it was running pre-pandemic (2.2% average from 2010–19). The "last mile" — from ~3.5% down to the Fed's 2% target — has historically taken multiple years in disinflation cycles. Markets are currently pricing two rate cuts in the next twelve months, contingent on this number drifting lower; a re-acceleration above 3.7% would likely pause that easing path.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Headline CPI includes all consumer prices — food, energy, shelter, medical, everything. Core CPI strips out food and energy because those two are volatile enough to mask the underlying trend. Today, headline is 3.10% and core is 3.40% — when energy prices fell over the past year, headline came down faster.
The Fed's official 2% target is on Core PCE, a slightly different inflation measure with different basket weights (it uses more recent shelter data and less weight on used cars). Core PCE typically runs 0.2–0.4 points below Core CPI. So today's 3.40% Core CPI maps to roughly 3.0%–3.1% Core PCE, still meaningfully above the 2% goal.
Shelter is about 40% of Core CPI because housing is by far the largest expense in most household budgets. The BLS measures it via "owners' equivalent rent" — surveying what homeowners would pay to rent their own homes. This methodology lags real-time rental data by 6–12 months, which is why core has been slow to cool even as rent inflation has fallen sharply since 2023.
The BLS publishes CPI (both headline and core) on a fixed schedule around the 10th–15th of each month at 8:30 AM ET, reporting the prior month's data. The release schedule and exact dates are published a year in advance at bls.gov.
Yes — Core CPI peaked at 6.66% YoY in September 2022, the highest reading since June 1982. The disinflation since then has been faster than most economists predicted at the time, though the last leg from ~3.5% to 2% is proving sticky.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · CPILFESL and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.