US topic · prices

Where are US prices now — and what is missing from this page?

CPI is 3.5% up on the year in 2026-06, derived here from a stored index of 332.568; the store carries no US core CPI series, so this page has no core reading — and no model here forecasts the headline either.

01 — where it stands

The numbers, as the snapshot stores them.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX, ALL URBAN CONSUMERS · YEAR ON YEAR

+3.5%

derived here, not stored: 332.568 in 2026-06 against 321.435 in 2025-06 · index 1982-84=100, seasonally adjusted

Observation: 2026-06
Vintage: 2026-07-27
Source: FRED · CPIAUCSL

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX, ALL URBAN CONSUMERS

332.568

stored as 332.568 · index 1982-84=100, seasonally adjusted

Observation: 2026-06
Vintage: 2026-07-27
Source: FRED · CPIAUCSL

CPIAUCSL is an index (index 1982-84=100, seasonally adjusted), not a rate. The UK inflation topic shows two published rates because the ONS publishes them as rates; the figure above is derived from the stored index instead — 332.568 in 2026-06 against 321.435 in 2025-06 is 3.5%. One month is missing from the stored index between 2020-01 and 2026-06, which is why the comparison above is matched on the period it names rather than counted back twelve rows.

How those readings have moved, derived from the same stored observations rather than typed in: Consumer price index, all urban consumers -0.7pp on the year-on-year rate against the prior month (2026-05).

02 — what the models see

The model view, and the same breath its limits.

No model in this suite forecasts the US economy. The only member whose question types include forecast is boe-svar, and its geography is UK-only. Both US models report a price response, and neither reports a price path:

frb-us answers economic_shock and nothing else. Its predictive validation is not_assessed — “LONGBASE is an illustrative tracking baseline, not an official Fed forecast, and no historical forecast evaluation is published here.”
us-hank answers economic_shock, and the first thing it cannot answer is forecasts (IRFs around a calibrated steady state, not a forecaster). Its predictive validation is not_applicable — “The model produces impulse responses around a calibrated steady state; it is not a forecaster and makes no predictive claims.”
us-hank outputs gdp, consumption, investment, inflation, real_rate as quarterly impulse responses, typically 5 years around a calibrated steady state, with uncertainty none quantified; deterministic linear IRFs.
Neither model is scored against an inflation outturn anywhere on this site, because neither produces one to score.

The conditioning baseline the frb-us experiments deviate from does carry a CPI path, and it is shown for the same reason as on the growth page — with the same caveat, in the same table:

FRB/US April 2026 LONGBASE, year-on-year CPI inflation. This is the conditioning baseline that frb-us shock experiments deviate from — not a forecast, and not scored on the forecast record.
Quarter	Baseline	Status against the outturn	Uncertainty
2026Q2	3.25%	outturn already published	none — the baseline carries no interval
2026Q3	3.23%	no outturn yet	none — the baseline carries no interval
2026Q4	3.24%	no outturn yet	none — the baseline carries no interval
2027Q1	2.97%	no outturn yet	none — the baseline carries no interval
2027Q2	2.84%	no outturn yet	none — the baseline carries no interval

No core CPI. The UK inflation topic carries core CPI beside the headline because the ONS series DKO8 is in the store. There is no US core series in the store at all: adding one means adding CPILFESL to the FRED table in data/fetch.py and letting the append-only fetcher accumulate vintages for it. Until that happens this page shows headline only, and says so rather than leaving the gap to be noticed.

03 — run it yourself

Every number above is a command away.

The price response to a policy surprise, in both models. The FRB/US run is a reviewed add-factor shock in model units; the HANK run is a first-order impulse response around the paper's calibration.

pe-macro frbus-shock --var rffintay_aerr --shock 1.0 --horizon 20   # price response to a 1pp policy surprise
pe-macro hank-summary   # shock catalogue, units and scope limits
pe-macro hank-shock --kind monetary --size -0.0025 --persistence 0.6   # a 25bp easing, quarterly IRF

Over MCP the same two models are frbus_shock and hank_shock, their metadata and scope limits are frbus_summary and hank_summary, and get_model_status returns the limitations quoted above as structured data rather than prose. recommend_model returns an explicit warning rather than a guess when no model supports a request. Connect a client →

04 — the data behind it

Source, coverage, and the immutable file.

Every value on this page is read from the vintage file linked here, not from a live call.
Series	Publisher	Coverage	Snapshots	This vintage	Next release
Consumer price index, all urban consumers	FRED · CPIAUCSL	2020-01 – 2026-06	1	2026-07-27.json	not announced

One series, where the UK inflation topic has two: no US core CPI is tracked in this store. FRED supplies no announced next-release date through this site's fetcher, so the column says so rather than guessing a schedule from the publisher's calendar.

The snapshot files are append-only and never edited, so a number published here can be reproduced against the data as it stood — browse the store, its release calendar, and the as-of recipe →