Inflation & Cost of Living Trackers

Headline CPI, core CPI, PCE, food and energy components — plus retail prices for the eggs, coffee, and gas you actually pay for at the register.

Inflation is the most personal economic statistic — it's literally the price of being alive. When CPI prints come in hot, your grocery bill, your gas pump receipts, and your medical copays all feel different. When inflation cools, the Fed eases, mortgage rates ease, and savings rates fall. Watching CPI is watching how fast your dollar is melting.

Our Inflation & Cost of Living trackers cover the headline number that drives Fed policy — the Consumer Price Index — plus the components that drive your monthly budget. Core CPI (CPI excluding food and energy, the version the Fed actually targets). PCE (the Fed's preferred gauge). Food-at-home inflation. Medical care inflation. Energy inflation. And the retail-price trackers for eggs, coffee, and gas at the pump.

Every number comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Federal Reserve. CPI updates monthly, around the 10th of each month. PCE updates later in the month. Component prices update on their own cadence. Every tracker shows year-over-year change (the inflation rate everyone quotes), month-over-month change, and the 5-year average so you can see whether a print is normal or unusual.

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Inflation & Cost of Living 8

CPI, food, medical, and everyday-good price gauges.

U.S. Inflation Rate (CPI) Year-over-year change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. LIVE 3.78% -0.10 Grocery Price Inflation CPI Food at Home — how fast supermarket prices are rising. LIVE 2.95% -0.15 Medical Care Inflation CPI Medical Care — healthcare cost growth, the chronic inflation story. LIVE 2.54% -0.10 Used Car Price Inflation CPI Used Cars and Trucks — the 2021–22 bubble and bust. LIVE -2.69% -0.30 Average Egg Price U.S. retail price per dozen Grade A large eggs — the canary in the inflation coal mine. LIVE $3.92 +$0.18 Average Coffee Price U.S. retail price per pound of ground roast coffee. LIVE $6.85 +$0.22 Core CPI (ex food & energy) The inflation gauge Fed-watchers actually use — strips out volatile food and energy. LIVE 3.40% -0.05 Core PCE The Fed's preferred inflation measure — Personal Consumption Expenditures ex food & energy. LIVE 2.80% -0.05

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Who Watches These Trackers?

Households

See whether the grocery and gas bills you're paying really are higher than last year — and by how much.

Savers

Compare your savings yield against inflation. Anything below CPI is a real loss of purchasing power.

Business Owners

Track input prices (food, energy, medical) to time price increases and budget for next quarter's costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Headline CPI is the full basket including food and energy — the inflation rate journalists usually quote. Core CPI strips out food and energy because those two categories swing wildly month to month. The Federal Reserve cares more about core CPI because it reflects underlying inflation pressure, not last week's oil shock. Most economists watch both.

CPI is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and weights the basket based on what households spend money on. PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) is published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and weights based on actual consumption data from businesses. PCE tends to run a few tenths of a percentage point lower than CPI. The Federal Reserve's official 2% inflation target is in PCE terms, which is why it's the most-watched number for Fed-watchers.

Because everyone notices when eggs are expensive. The egg-price tracker is the cleanest possible signal for "are food prices actually going up?" It's a single SKU with no substitutions, no quality adjustments, no hedonic math. When egg prices double, you feel it in a way you don't feel a 0.3% monthly CPI print.

The headline CPI and core CPI we show are seasonally adjusted — the standard version most analysts quote. Energy and food prices have huge seasonal swings (gasoline rises every summer, holiday food prices rise every December), so adjustment makes year-over-year comparisons meaningful. The exception is some commodity retail prices (eggs, coffee), where we use the BLS Average Price series, which is not seasonally adjusted.

Compare it to the prior year-over-year reading and to the Fed's 2% target. A print well above 3% with month-over-month acceleration is hot — usually means the Fed will hold rates higher for longer. A print below 2.5% trending toward 2% is the Fed's sweet spot — usually means rate cuts are coming. Each tracker page shows the full history so you can see the trend yourself.