US Inflation Data Was Accidentally Released 30 Minutes Early

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Economics
US Inflation Data Was Accidentally Released 30 Minutes Early

• Full investigation underway, Bureau of Labor Statistics says
• Early publication appeared to go unnoticed by investors

By Laura Curtis and Alexandre Tanzi
May 15, 2024 at 8:07 PM EDT
Updated on May 15, 2024 at 11:41 PM EDT

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics inadvertently published Consumer Price Index data 30 minutes early on Wednesday, raising fresh questions about how the agency releases some of the world’s most sensitive economic information.

While there were no obvious signs that the early publication moved markets, the episode is likely to prompt a close look at the dissemination of data that has implications for global asset prices and Federal Reserve policy.

{snip}

[bucolic_frolic]

1. "how the agency releases"

Somebody has to set up the release info/page hours before, if not the previous evening. Somebody pushes a button at the appropriate time.

[progree]

2. Archive link. Also reasons for differences you might see in CPI number postings

Last edited Fri May 17, 2024, 03:57 AM - Edit history (4)

https://archive.is/7PGhg

“In advance of today’s CPI and Real Earnings releases, BLS inadvertently loaded a subset of files to the website approximately 30 minutes prior to the release,” the agency said in a statement posted on its website Wednesday evening.

FWIW, I was checking the https://www.bls.gov/ main page just prior to 8:30 AM ET (8:30 AM is the proper release time for CPI reports) and there was no sign of the new report either in the 4 latest news releases in the center of the page, and the Latest Numbers section on the right hand side still showed the CPI from a month earlier. All that changed the next time I checked at 8:31 AM ET. So not everything updated system-wide half an hour earlier.

By the way, looking at that page, there is the CPI inflation calculator - know that it uses the NOT Seasonally Adjusted CPI numbers. Whereas my graphs and tables , and media reports, and the main numbers and narrative of the BLS CPI news release https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
are the seasonally adjusted numbers (except the 12-month numbers).

One poster has been posting not-seasonally-adjusted CPI figures from the calculator here in the Economy Group and elsewhere. That's fine. It's just that if comparing those numbers with numbers you see in the media etc. (see above paragraph) and noticing different numbers, that's the reason for the differences. The not-seasonally-adjusted numbers for e.g. the last month and last 3 months are currently higher than the seasonally adjusted ones.

Coincidentally, the Repukes have also been posting the not-seasonally-adjusted CPI numbers for the span of the Biden presidency (January 2021 to present), no doubt because they are worse than the seasonally adjusted ones, and no doubt they would be posting the seasonally adjusted ones if they were the worst of the two. (The Repukes have been making an enormous hoo hah about inflation and wages during his presidency https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bidens-big-inflation-problem-prices-are-now-up-nearly-20-since-he-took-office-080049551.html ) (To be clear, I'm sure the "one poster" in the previous paragraph is not a Repuke)

Actually real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) earnings are higher than pre-pandemic. But if you start at January 2021, the start of the Biden presidency, real wages are lower now than then, thanks to a huge bump-up in the early months (early 2020) of the pandemic (last hired first fired and that low-wage sectors had disproportionately high numbers of layoffs during the worst of the pandemic shutdowns)

Real average hourly earnings of private sector workers thru April (graph and table): https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000013