Analysis: U.S. consumer prices rise modestly in July, but data quality concerns intensify

PANews reported on August 12 that U.S. consumer prices rose modestly in July, but a measure of underlying inflation posted its largest increase in six months due to higher commodity costs caused by import tariffs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.2% month-over-month in July, in line with expectations and down from 0.3% in June. The year-over-year increase was 2.7%, below expectations and unchanged from 2.7% in June. The core CPI rose 0.3% month-over-month, the largest increase since January, and 3.1% year-over-year, up from 2.9% in June. The CPI report came amid growing concerns about the quality of inflation and employment reports. Previously, U.S. government budget and staffing cuts led some regions across the country to suspend data collection for parts of the CPI basket. Citing the need to "match survey workload with resource levels," the BLS completely suspended CPI data collection for one city in Nebraska, as well as in Utah and New York. Additionally, the BLS suspended data collection for an average of 15% of its sample size in 72 other regions. This temporarily reduced the price and rent data used to calculate the CPI. This leads the Bureau of Labor Statistics to use estimates to fill in the missing information.