Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed's preferred gauge shows

[Wiz Imp]

15. This is ridiculous. Personally I have never heard of the Personal Consumer Expenditure Price Index called any kind of

Last edited Fri May 30, 2025, 12:26 PM - Edit history (1)

an official measure of inflation. It's always been the CPI.

The CPI is the most widely used measure of inflation and is sometimes viewed as an indicator of the effectiveness of government economic policy.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm

The PCE is not limited to prices paid by households (odd given the name) so it is actually a less accurate measure of prices paid by consumers in my opinion.

Most importantly, the difference in the rate as measured by the 2 indices recent years has been significant with Trump, Republicans and the Media ALWAYS (100% of the time) referring to the CPI until now. Now they want to focus on the PCE??? Of course they do and it is blatantly dishonest.

https://economics.td.com/us-cpi-pce

As of the second quarter of 2022, the quarter-over-quarter (q/q) change in CPI (seasonally adjusted at annual rates) was a full 3.4 percentage-points above the same period change in PCE – the highest difference on record

Of course that is when inflation peaked. The core PCE inflation rate peaked in 2022 at just 5.58%. Compared to 9.1% for the CPI.



Note, the PCE index showed a drop in food prices in April. That certainly wasn't my experience so I have a hard time putting much faith in those numbers.