Covering the Consumer Price Index

Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute has a great primer Tuesday on the dos and don’t to covering the Consumer Price Index, which is scheduled to be released Wednesday morning.

Tompkins wrote, “The area in which you live also can affect your price experiences. You shouldn’t expect the national or a regional CPI always to mirror your price experiences. It is possible, for example, that sharp price increases in one area are offset by lower prices in other areas, resulting in a more moderate price change published for the nation or a region.

“Some who report the numbers this week will no doubt refer to the CPI as “the cost of living” index. It isn’t. The BLS says a real cost-of living-index would include things the CPI does not, for instance, taxes not associated with buying things (like income tax and Social Security tax), the cost of crime on your life and so on.

“The CPI is not the only gauge of inflation — not by a long shot. The CPI measures inflation that consumers feel in their day-to-day living expenses. Other indexes (see question 12) measure other types of inflation, such as the Producer Price Index, which measures inflation at earlier stages of production, and the Employment Cost Index, which measures inflation in the labor market.”

Read more here.