Cleveland fed median Cpi

The Cleveland Fed does some of the math on the US CPI print to offer a picture of underlying inflation and it continues to be problematic.

  • median CPI +0.6% m/m vs +0.7% prior
  • 16% trimmed mean +0.5% vs +0.6% prior
  • Median y/y 7.2% vs 7.1% prior
  • 16% trimmed mean +6.5% vs +6.6% prior

At least it's moving in the right direction.

Explanation of the indicator for the Cleveland Fed:

To calculate the median CPI, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland looks at the prices of the goods and services published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). But instead of calculating an inflation rate that is a weighted average of all of the items in the CPI, as the BLS does, the Cleveland Fed ranks the inflation rates of the components of the CPI and picks the one in the middle of the distribution—that is, the item whose expenditure weight is in the 50th percentile of the price change distribution. The Cleveland Fed also calculates the 16 percent trimmed-mean CPI by taking a weighted average across the component inflation rates after excluding, or trimming, items whose expenditure weights fall in the top 8 percent and bottom 8 percent of the price change distribution.

The Cleveland Fed also has a Nowcast for March CPI that's running at +0.3% on the headline and +0.45% on core.