The federal government’s inflation measures can feel … wrong. How accurate are they?
The federal government’s inflation measures can feel … wrong. How accurate are they?
The Federal Reserve starts a two-day meeting on interest rates on Tuesday. The inflation indexes that inform the Fed’s decisions don’t always jibe with consumers’ experiences. As in, the official measures seem pretty low. But wait, are the inflation measures the Fed depends on just … wrong?
We all have our gut feelings about inflation, based not on the government’s official tallies, but on sort of a basket of our favorite goods and services whose prices we follow closely like a gallon of gas or stuff in our grocery carts.
“There are certain kinds of cheese or a quart of blueberries that is my go-to reference,” said Brett House, a professor of economics at Columbia University.
He said he uses the cheese and blueberry prices as a kind of north star to track how inflation is hitting his wallet.
The federal government has two north stars for inflation: the Consumer Price Index and the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. Each has its own basket, tracking the prices of certain goods and services. They give more weight to some items in the basket than others. And the baskets may or may not include your own, personal north star prices.
“No sample survey index is entirely accurate. They don’t capture every price,” House said.
Or every consumers’ experience. You might feel like inflation is much hotter than the CPI and PCE if you’re spending most of your paycheck on high-priced stuff, like rent on a new apartment.
“I kind of knew from my job that rents were elevated,” said Justin Weidner, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York.
He just moved into a one bedroom apartment where he’s paying about $3,300 a month. Weidner said if you’re apartment or house hunting, eat out a couple times a week or have kids in daycare, you probably think the CPI and PCE are too low.
“There is some sense in which they are wrong relative to the average person,” he said.
But Weidner said the inflation indexes aren’t meant to be one size fits all. They’re supposed to represent the experience of a typical consumer.
So the PCE and CPI aren’t exactly wrong — but that doesn’t mean they can’t be improved.
Allison Schrager is an economist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She pointed out that it takes a while for new products to be included in the baskets.
“Not initially – usually not until like it’s widely adopted,” she said.
Schrager said the CPI and PCE generally don’t directly include borrowing costs. But, she said, it might be time to add them in, since it looks like interest rates will be higher for longer.
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