Core inflation: the CPI without food and energy
Choose an area: the calculator gives the 12-month change of the all items less food and energy index, beside the headline rate.
All items less food and energy, U.S. average
+2.6 %
12 months to September 2026, not seasonally adjusted.
| 12 months to August 2026 | +2.4 % |
| Index level | 339.287 |
| Published | every month |
| Next national release | October 2026, on November 10 |
The October 2026 index will have no 12-month change: October 2025 was never published.
Prepared by Radif Partners · How the figures are built · BLS indexes through September 2026
Core inflation, the CPI-U for all items less food and energy, was 2.6 % over the 12 months to September 2026, against 3.7 % for all items. The gap of 1.2 points this year comes almost entirely from energy, which rose 20.4 % over the same months. The core index covers about 80 % of the CPI-U basket in the December 2025 weights: everything except food (13.7 %) and energy (6.4 %). The BLS publishes it because some users want to look past food and energy prices, which are relatively volatile, to what they see as the underlying rate of inflation. It is not a cheaper or a "real" measure of the cost of living: households pay for food and gasoline. In the metro areas, where the BLS also publishes the core index, the latest 12-month rate runs from -0.2 % in Houston to +4.5 % in Urban Hawaii.
What core leaves out, and why
Food and energy prices move for reasons that have little to do with the rest of the economy: a frost in a growing region, a refinery outage, a war that cuts oil supply. Those swings can push the headline rate up or down by a point within a few months and reverse just as fast. By removing them, the core index shows the slower movement of everything else: rents, medical care, cars, clothing, insurance, services. The BLS describes it simply: some users of CPI data use this index because food and energy prices are relatively volatile, and they want to focus on what they perceive to be the core or underlying rate of inflation.
The core index is not a separate survey. It is built from the same prices as the all items CPI, with the food and energy components taken out and the remaining weights scaled up. Shelter becomes an even larger part of it: about 45 % of core, against 36 % of all items.
Core and headline, year by year
| Year | All items | Core (less food and energy) |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | +1.8 % | +2.2 % |
| 2020 | +1.2 % | +1.7 % |
| 2021 | +4.7 % | +3.6 % |
| 2022 | +8.0 % | +6.2 % |
| 2023 | +4.1 % | +4.8 % |
| 2024 | +2.9 % | +3.4 % |
| 2025 | +2.6 % | +2.8 % |
The two lines cross depending on what energy does. In 2019, 2020, 2023, 2024, 2025, core ran above the headline rate, when energy was cheap or falling; in the other years energy pushed the headline above core. In 2026, with gasoline up 34.2 % over 12 months, the headline is well above core.
Core inflation in a metro area
All items less food and energy, New York
+3.7 %
| 12 months to August 2026 | +3.8 % |
| Index level | 375.068 |
| Published | every month |
| Next national release | October 2026, on November 10 |
Why central banks and markets watch it
Because the core rate changes direction less often, many readers of the CPI use it as a guide to the trend, while the headline rate can be dragged for months by one commodity. One caution: the Federal Reserve's own goal, inflation of 2 percent over the longer run, is defined on a different index, the price index for personal consumption expenditures, not on the CPI (Federal Reserve). The two measure related things in different ways and are not equal, and this site covers only the CPI.
What is inside core
Take food and energy out and the basket that remains is dominated by services. In the December 2025 weights, shelter alone is 35.6 % of the CPI-U, medical care 8.4 %, education and communication 5.8 %, recreation 5.1 % and apparel 2.4 %; transportation without its fuel and the other goods and services make up the rest of the core's 79.9 %. A core rate that stays high therefore usually means that rents and services are still rising fast, which is a slower process to reverse than a jump at the pump. Shelter over the same 12 months: 3.2 %; medical care: 1.5 %.
Core inflation where you live
The BLS publishes the core index for every region and metro area it covers, not seasonally adjusted. Local core rates are less noisy than local headline rates, because energy, the most volatile part, is gone. They still swing more than the national core, since the local samples are small. Today they range from -0.2 % to +4.5 % over the latest 12 months published; shelter explains much of the spread, as the page on city differences shows.
When to use core, and when not
For a forecast or a judgment on the trend, core is useful. For money, it is usually the wrong index. A pension, a wage or a rent that follows core would ignore the price of food and energy, which are about 20 % of the average budget and a larger share for many households. Contracts, Social Security and tax brackets all use indexes that include food and energy. If you want to know whether your own budget kept up, the spending group calculator lets you apply food, energy or shelter separately to what you actually spend.
A note on October 2025
The core index was not published for October 2025 either, like every series used here. The October 2026 release, due November 10, 2026, will give the core level but no 12-month change; the November figures on December 10, 2026 will bring it back. The October 2025 page explains why.