The CPI Report: Release Schedule and How to Read It

CPI release dates for 2026 and 2027

BLS publishes each month's Consumer Price Index around the middle of the following month, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The figures are embargoed until that minute. The dates below are the official BLS schedule as of 27 October 2026.

Dates can move. The 2025 federal government shutdown pushed the September 2025 report from 15 October to 24 October 2025, and BLS never collected October 2025 survey prices at all. Any change appears first on the BLS schedule page.

What the latest CPI report showed (September 2026)

The September 2026 report, released on 14 October 2026, showed the CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) up 0.6 percent in the month, seasonally adjusted, after 0.4 percent in August. Over 12 months the index rose 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustment, up from 3.4 percent in August.

Gasoline did most of the work. Its index rose 9.1 percent in September, which BLS said accounted for over half of the monthly increase. Energy as a whole was up 20.4 percent on the year. Outside food and energy the picture was calmer: core prices rose 0.3 percent in the month, as in August, and 2.6 percent on the year.

The CPI-U index stood at 336.940 (1982 to 1984 = 100). Two sister measures came out alongside it: the CPI-W, which drives Social Security, rose 3.9 percent over 12 months, and the chained CPI-U rose 3.5 percent.

The year has not been smooth. The 12-month rate was 2.4 percent in January and February 2026, jumped to 3.3 percent in March, when the energy index rose 10.9 percent in a single month, and peaked at 4.2 percent in May. It eased to 3.4 percent in July and August before September's rise. Every annual rate back to 1914 is in the US inflation rate by year table.

How to read the release, line by line

The opening paragraph mixes two kinds of number. The monthly change is seasonally adjusted; the 12-month change is not. BLS adjusts monthly figures to remove price movements that recur at the same time each year, such as weather, production cycles, model changeovers and holidays, so one month can be compared with the next. A 12-month change compares the same month a year apart, so the seasonal pattern largely cancels out.

After that paragraph, the release runs in a fixed order:

1. Table A. Seven months of seasonally adjusted monthly changes for the major groups, with the 12-month change in the last column. It shows at a glance whether a jump is a single month or a run.
2. Category paragraphs. Food, then energy, then everything else, naming the components that rose or fell most.
3. Not seasonally adjusted measures. The CPI-U index level, plus the CPI-W and the chained CPI-U.
4. Tables 1 to 7. Index levels and changes by category, each with its relative importance, the share of spending it represents. Table 4 breaks the all items index out by city and region.

Two habits make the release easier to judge. First, small differences are close to noise. BLS estimates the standard error of the monthly all items change at 0.04 percent, so a published 0.2 percent change means BLS is 95 percent confident the true figure lies between 0.12 and 0.28 percent. A reading 0.1 point away from forecasts sits near the edge of that band.

Second, monthly changes compound. A 0.6 percent month, repeated for a year, works out to about 7.4 percent annualized. One hot month says little on its own; Table A shows whether it is part of a run.

Headline CPI vs core CPI

Headline CPI is the all items index. Core CPI is the same index without food and energy, which BLS publishes as all items less food and energy. In the September 2026 release, core carried 79.1 percent of the CPI-U basket, food 13.5 percent and energy 7.4 percent.

Core exists because food and energy prices are volatile and often reverse, which can hide the underlying trend. The trade-off is plain: households still buy groceries and fuel. In September 2026 the two measures were more than a point apart, 3.7 percent headline against 2.6 percent core, almost entirely because of energy.

The weights themselves move. Energy's share of the CPI-U was 6.4 percent in December 2025 and 7.4 percent by August 2026. BLS did not reweight the basket; energy prices rose faster than everything else, so the same quantity of fuel took a bigger share of spending.

Neither CPI measure is the Federal Reserve's formal target. The Fed defines its 2 percent goal using the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE), published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. BEA's September 2026 PCE figures are due on 29 October 2026. The differences are covered in PCE vs CPI and core inflation.

Shelter, the slowest part of the index

Shelter is the largest single component, 35.3 percent of the CPI-U in the September 2026 release. Most of it is owners' equivalent rent (25.9 percent), an estimate of what homeowners would pay to rent their own homes, plus rent of primary residence (7.7 percent).

BLS splits its rent sample into six panels and prices each unit every six months. The monthly change is the sixth root of the six-month change, so a turn in market rents takes many months to show up fully in the CPI. In September 2026 shelter rose 0.4 percent in the month and 3.2 percent on the year; owners' equivalent rent was up 3.3 percent and rent 2.8 percent.

Owners' equivalent rent is also the most debated line in the index, because it measures a rent nobody pays rather than house prices or mortgage costs. The case for and against is set out in how the consumer price index is built.

The October 2025 gap and the 10 November report

The 2025 shutdown left a hole in the record. BLS did not collect CPI data from 1 October through 12 November 2025, issued no October 2025 news release, and for most series never published an October 2025 index; its tables show a dash for that month. To calculate November, it carried prices for goods and services forward from September 2025, and rents from April 2025.

That gap lands on the next release. The October 2026 report would normally compare October 2026 with October 2025, and for most series there is no published October 2025 figure to compare against. The BLS shutdown FAQ, last updated on 30 July 2026, does not address how that comparison will be shown on 10 November.

Two other effects are already scheduled. BLS plans to publish final chained CPI-U figures for October to December 2025 on 10 November 2026, and it says missing spending data from October and November 2025 will affect the 2027 CPI weights, an update it expects in February 2027.

Where the CPI report's numbers end up

Several payments that older savers rely on are tied by law or contract to one CPI series or another:

• Social Security. The cost-of-living adjustment uses the CPI-W, comparing third-quarter averages. The CPI-W averaged 328.746 in the third quarter of 2026 against 317.265 a year earlier, which produced the 3.6 percent increase payable from January 2027.
• I bonds. TreasuryDirect resets the inflation component every 1 May and 1 November using the non-seasonally adjusted CPI-U.
• TIPS. Treasury adjusts the principal of inflation-protected securities using the CPI-U.
• Tax brackets. Federal brackets have been indexed to the chained CPI-U since 2017.

The index level carries the long view. At 336.940, the CPI-U says a basket that cost $100 in 1982 to 1984 cost about $337 in September 2026, so a dollar now buys roughly 30 percent of what it bought then. The inflation calculator runs the same arithmetic for any amount and year back to 1913.