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Todd L. Wilson
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for All Items increased 3.3 percent in 1996, following a 2.5-percent advance in 1995.1 The 1996 rise was the highest annual rate of increase since a 6.1-percent advance in 1990. (See table 1.) Accelerations in energy and food prices were major factors behind the rise in the overall index. While these components represent slightly more than 20 percent of the total expenditure weight in the CPI, they contributed nearly 40 percent of the increase in consumer prices during 1996. Excluding food and energy prices, the (underlying) CPI-U increased only 2.6 percent, down from 3.0 percent in 1995. This was the lowest recorded increase in this index since 1965, with the exception of another 2.6-percent rise in 1994.
This excerpt is from an article published in the April 1997 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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Footnotes
1 Annual percent changes are December-to-December
changes.
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