Consumer prices rose 0.2% in August as annual inflation rate hits lowest since early 2021

[progree]

6. This time, the rumbling of the gears was extra rumbly, like Felonious Maximus's night last night

You've no doubt noticed that I found discrepancies between the BLS's cpi.nr0.htm summary, and their timeseries numbers for 12-month numbers (and I've dug into that, and even though the cpi.nr0.htm summary uses seasonally adjusted numbers, there is one exception: the 12-month numbers, which in their narration say are not seasonally adjusted. Well the time series for the 12-month NOT Seasonally Adjusted agree -- 2.5% for the headline CPI and 3.2% for the Core CPI. (The corresponding number for the Seasonally Adjusted numbers are 2.6% and 3.3%)

I have long noticed their narration mentions the 12 month numbers are not seasonally adjusted, and I've often wondered why since all their other numbers in the narration are seasonally adjusted. I assumed SA and NSA were the same on a 12 month basis, so I've shrugged my shoulders in the past, and have never found a difference in my spreadsheet calculations and graphs which are all SA -- I always check the 12 month numbers of the narrative with my spreadsheet, and they've always been the same. Until today.

Takeaway for now: #1 for some reason they aren't consistent in their narration: using SA numbers throughout except for the 12 month numbers. Why, I don' t know.

#2 The SA and NSA numbers aren't the same on a 12 month basis but have always rounded to the same number on a tenth of a percent rounding basis, up to now.

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I also extended my 36 month rolling average graph to 48 month rolling average graph to include some pre-pandemic months, and it was messier work than I had expected. Besides having to extend my data backwards a year, Excel and I weren't getting along, and I was thinking Excel was stealing and eating people's pets or something (Felonious' answer to everything he doesn't have an answer to).

I've never posted either my rolling 36 month or 48 month graph -- I do it for my own amusement. Basically it's a rolling average of the past 4 years covering a span of 8 years. Here it is, through August 2024.