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RAND California provides Consumer Price Index data for urban consumers (CPI-U) for the U.S., California, and major California regions. The CPI-U, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is the most commonly-used inflation measure for a number of purposes, such as cost-of-living adjustments, real estate contracts, and other inflation-adjustment measures. CPI-U measures the average change in prices paid for a market basket of goods purchased for consumption for urban consumers (about 80% of the U.S. population). RAND California does not publish CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
CPI-U is not adjusted for seasonal variations. Contact the Bureau of Labor Statistics for seasonally-adjusted CPI statistics.
RAND California inflation statistics publishes two types of CPI-U data: the CPI-U index and a moving annual percent change. CPI-U index data reflects raw data provided by the BLS. Users can estimate the inflation for any time period using the index. For example, in the following example:
| Time period | Index |
| January 1997 | 155.7 |
| January 1998 | 159.1 |
CPI-U = ((IndexJan. 1997 -IndexJan. 1996))/IndexJan. 1996)*100 = (159.1/155.7) = 2.2%.
This one-year moving average is the method RAND California utilizes to publish CPI-U as a moving annual average. For example, the CPI-U figure for January 1997 reflects the change in CPI from January 1996-January 1997 as calculated above.