Courtesy of Doug Short.
Here is a table showing the annualized change in Headline and Core CPI for each of the past five months. I’ve also included each of the eight components of Headline CPI and a separate entry for Energy, which is a collection of sub-indexes in Housing and Transportation.
We can make some inferences about how inflation is impacting our personal expenses depending on our relative exposure to the individual components.
The Trends in Headline and Core CPI
The chart below shows Headline and Core CPI for urban consumers since 2007. Core CPI excludes the two most volatile components, food and energy.
Core CPI has been on the rise and is now at the Fed’s inflation target of 2% (1.97% at one decimal is 2%). However, the more attention-grabbing headline CPI has more than doubled since January.
For a longer-term perspective, here is a column-style breakdown of the inflation categories showing the change since 2000.
Note: For additional information on the component composition of the Consumer Price Index, see my Inside the Consumer Price Index.
