Inflation is not a number — it is {{ "{:,}".format(s.item_strata) }} of them, measured in {{ s.areas }} different places. This is the U.S. consumer price index taken apart: every item stratum the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes, in every area it publishes one for, month by month from {{ s.first }} to {{ s.last }}.
{{ "{:,}".format(s.rows) }} observations across {{ "{:,}".format(s.series) }} series. Pick an item, pick the places you want to compare, and the chart is rebuilt from the panel itself — with the underlying rows downloadable as CSV or Parquet.
The panel covers {{ s.first }} onward. Deeper history exists, but only in a separate and materially staler vintage: a mirror of the same CPI concept reaching back to {{ s.spine_first }} and stopping at {{ s.spine_last }} — {{ "{:,}".format(s.spine_rows) }} observations. Those two vintages ship as two files and are never merged into one line. If you need the long view, take the older one — and say on your own chart that that is what it is.
The retired areas, named here rather than quietly dropped: {{ s.stubs | join("; ") }}.
{% endif %}The source panel arrived with every one of its {{ "{:,}".format(s.rows) }} rows labelled “national”, while the series identifiers carried {{ s.areas }} real area codes. The area names themselves are not distributed in any lookup table this project holds, so they were recovered from the Bureau’s own series titles, which name the area in a fixed position. Six area codes are checked against independently-known values on every build, and the build fails rather than ship a label it cannot verify. Full method: Methodology.