Inflation and Cost-of-Living Statistics 2026

📐 Figures verified Sep 26, 2026 against the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index release for August 2026, published September 11, 2026, and the BLS CPI-U index series. The next release is due October 14, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and this page is updated that day. How we check numbers →

Numbers That Matter: the August 2026 CPI

The Headline Numbers

The figure in the news is the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U, before seasonal adjustment. For August 2026 it was 3.4%. Bureau of Labor Statistics staff collect prices on roughly 80,000 goods and services every month in 75 urban areas, and the index weights them by how the average urban household spends. The CPI-U covers households that make up over 90 percent of the U.S. population, which makes it the broadest official measure of consumer prices.

Core inflation is the same index without food and energy, and it was 2.4% over the year. Economists watch core because food and fuel prices swing from month to month, so it is a steadier guide to where inflation is heading. It is not the rate households pay. Groceries and gasoline are in every budget, and the whole gap between the headline and core rates comes from them.

The monthly number works differently. BLS also reports the change from the previous month after removing regular seasonal patterns: +0.4% for all items and +0.3% for core in August 2026. A one-month change is noisy, and multiplying it by 12 does not give a reliable annual rate, which is why the 12-month change is the figure to cite. One release earlier, the 12-month rate was 3.4% for all items and 2.5% for core.

Two more indexes from the same release decide real money. The CPI-W covers households of wage earners and clerical workers, about 30 percent of the population. It was +3.5% over the year, and Social Security uses its July-to-September average to set the annual cost-of-living adjustment. The chained CPI-U accounts for shoppers switching to cheaper substitutes and tends to rise a little more slowly than the regular index. It was +3.3%, and since 2018 it has indexed federal income tax brackets, the standard deduction and many other tax thresholds (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32).

The Federal Reserve's 2 percent goal is set for a different gauge: the personal consumption expenditures price index from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which covers a wider range of spending and usually runs a little below the CPI (Federal Reserve FAQ).

In index terms, the CPI-U stood at 334.980 in August 2026 (1982–84 = 100), against 323.976 a year earlier. Dividing one level by the other is how the 12-month rate is calculated, and it is the same arithmetic behind the cost-of-living table further down.

CPI by Category: Every Major Line

The table lists each category we track from the August 2026 release, grouped the way BLS groups them. The weight is the category's relative importance, its share of the average urban household's spending in the index, from the relative importance tables BLS publishes with each release. The last column is what the category adds to the 12-month rate, in percentage points; the next section explains the calculation. Indented lines are parts of the line above, but not every part is listed, so they do not always add up.

Three groups get their own mention in the release without a weight in our table: medical care as a whole was +1.6%, recreation +2.7% and personal care +3.8%.

What Is Driving Inflation

A category's effect on the headline depends on two things: how much its price changed and how much of the basket it fills. We multiply the two, using each category's weight as it stood a year earlier, which is how the index itself is built. Calculated that way, the contributions of food, energy and everything else add up to the headline rate, apart from rounding in the published figures.

Energy is only 7.3% of the basket, yet with its index at +16.3% over the year it adds 1.06 points to the 3.4% headline, roughly a third of the total. Shelter, the largest weight at 35.3%, adds 1.06 points on a much smaller price change. Together the two account for more than half of the headline rate.

Gasoline shows how a small weight can move the total. It is less than 4% of the basket at 3.8%, but its price change of +27.4% adds 0.84 points, more than twice as much as all food combined at 0.37 points. Goods other than food and energy, from cars to clothing, add 0.14 points, while services other than energy add 1.82.

These contributions are our calculation from BLS weights and 12-month changes, not a BLS series. The formula is weight × change ÷ (1 + change), multiplied by (1 + the headline rate), which converts today's weights back to the year-ago weights that the 12-month change is built on. BLS rounds each published change to one decimal, so the parts can miss the headline by a few hundredths of a point.

Energy and Gas Price Statistics

Energy has set the pace for prices in 2026. The energy index was +16.3% in the 12 months to August 2026, more than four times the rate for all items. The detail:

• Gasoline (all types): +27.4%, with a weight of 3.770; motor fuel as a whole +27.9%.
• Fuel oil: +52.0%. This is mostly home heating oil, which is used mainly in the Northeast.
• Electricity: +3.8%.
• Utility (piped) gas: +4.4%.
• Energy commodities, the fuels bought by the gallon, +28.0%, against +4.0% for energy services, the utility bills.

Household electricity and gas bills are rising far more slowly than energy overall; the shock is in fuels. Heating oil shows the gap between national and personal numbers. Its weight is only 0.107, so it adds 0.04 points to the headline, yet for a household that heats with oil, the main heating fuel is +52.0% from a year earlier (EIA on heating oil use).

The CPI tracks gasoline as a price index, not in dollars per gallon. For pump prices in dollars, the Energy Information Administration publishes a weekly national average by region and grade in its Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update. EIA surveys stations on one day each week while the CPI samples prices across the month, so the two measures can differ slightly.

The jump came after two quiet years. During 2025, energy prices rose 2.3%, after falling 0.5% in 2024 and 2.0% in 2023, although household utility bills climbed: electricity rose 6.7% and piped gas 10.8% from December 2024 to December 2025 (BLS, 2025 in review).

Food and Grocery Prices

Food prices were +2.7% from a year earlier. Groceries, which BLS calls food at home, were +2.2%; restaurant meals and takeout, food away from home, were +3.4%. That means restaurant prices are rising faster than grocery prices, a common pattern because menu prices carry a restaurant's wages and rent as well as its ingredients.

Food takes 13.5% of the average budget, 8.2% for groceries and 5.3% for eating out, and adds 0.37 points to the headline. For comparison, food prices rose 3.1% during 2025, with groceries up 2.4% and restaurant meals up 4.1% (BLS). Our guide to building a monthly budget shows how to plan around the food lines that move most.

Two smaller lines sit with goods in the index rather than under food: alcoholic beverages at +1.6% and tobacco and smoking products at +6.3%.

Housing and Rent

Shelter is the largest part of the CPI, 35.3% of the basket, and its prices were +3.0% over the year. Rent of a primary residence was +2.7% and owners' equivalent rent +3.1%, so rent is rising a little more slowly than owners' equivalent rent. Shelter adds 1.06 points to the headline.

The CPI does not include house prices or mortgage payments. It treats a home as an investment and measures homeowners' housing costs as owners' equivalent rent: an estimate of what the home would rent for, based on rents for comparable units. That is why mortgage rates can climb without moving the CPI directly, and why homeowners with a fixed-rate mortgage often face less inflation than the headline suggests. Our guide to the real cost of homeownership covers the costs the index leaves out.

CPI rents also change slowly. The index follows rents paid by all tenants, including the many who renew without moving, rather than only asking rents on new leases, so it tends to lag listing prices when the rental market turns.

Cars, Insurance and Travel

• New vehicles: +0.6%.
• Used cars and trucks: −2.3%.
• Motor vehicle insurance: −5.1%.
• Maintenance and repair: +5.2%, faster than prices overall.
• Airline fares: +23.4%.
• Transportation services overall: +2.4%.

Two of the biggest car costs are lower than a year ago: used vehicles and insurance premiums. With weights of 2.7% and 2.6% of the basket, they take 0.07 and 0.14 points off the headline. Airfares moved the other way, and with a weight of 1.0% they add 0.21 points.

Medical Care

Medical care prices as a whole were +1.6% over the year. Medical care services, the larger part, were +2.5%, with physicians' services at +2.0% and hospital services at +5.2%, well ahead of medical care as a whole. Medical care commodities, which include prescription drugs, were −2.7%.

The medical care weight in the CPI covers what consumers pay directly, including their own share of health insurance premiums, not the part paid by employers or government programs. That keeps its weight, 6.9% for services and 1.4% for commodities, far below health care's share of national spending.

Cost of Living Since 2020

Twelve-month rates hide how much prices have built up. The cleaner measure divides today's index level by an earlier one. Measured that way, prices are +29.9% higher than in January 2020, just before the pandemic: what cost $100 then costs $129.85 now.

The table uses CPI-U index levels without seasonal adjustment, BLS series CUUR0000SA0, the same series behind BLS's own CPI Inflation Calculator. BLS does not revise these levels after publication, so each row changes only when a new month is released. For your own amounts and dates, use our Inflation Calculator.

Wages are the other half of the cost-of-living question, and they are not in the CPI. BLS publishes a separate real earnings report on CPI release day that adjusts average hourly earnings for inflation. Comparing your own raise with the 12-month rate, or with your personal rate, is the household version of the same test.

Inflation by Year

Measured from December to December, these are the annual inflation rates for the CPI-U, with the December index level for each year (BLS historical tables):

The 12-month rate peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, the largest 12-month increase since November 1981; the index went from 271.696 in June 2021 to 296.311 in June 2022 (BLS series CUUR0000SA0). The calendar years 2021 and 2022, at 7.0% and 6.5%, were the steepest since 1981. In 2025 prices rose 2.7% (BLS December 2025 release).

One month is missing from the record. The federal government shutdown in the fall of 2025 stopped BLS from collecting prices in October, so no October 2025 index was published. The December-to-December rate for 2025 is unaffected, because both end points exist.

Social Security COLA History

Social Security's cost-of-living adjustment tracks the CPI-W, comparing its average for July, August and September with the same months of the last year a COLA took effect. These are the adjustments of recent years (SSA):

The 2027 adjustment will be announced with the September CPI on October 14, 2026, and this table will be updated that day. The CPI-W was +3.5% in the 12 months to August 2026. For how the COLA fits into claiming decisions, see our guide on when to claim Social Security.

What It Means in Dollars

What Changed in 2026

For how these national changes land on a single household, see our guide to your personal inflation rate and the Numbers Desk report on the August CPI and the gasoline shock. Savers comparing yields with inflation can start with our guide to high-yield savings accounts.

Using and Citing These Numbers

Frequently Asked Questions