Announcement to Users of CPI Data
Effective with the release of January 1998 data
on February 24, 1998, the Consumer Price Index will undergo many
changes as a result of our 1998 weight revision. In addition to
updates to expenditure weights and changes to the composition of
some group and subgroup indexes, there will also be changes in
the availability of and item codes for published item and area
indexes. A concordance between the old series and the revised
series for CPI items is available in the item concordance. A list of published
areas is available.
Please see The 1998 CPI Revision documents on
our World Wide Web site at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/ for more detailed information about the CPI Revision.
Changes to Databases: As always, the most
up-to-date CPI data will be found in CU (Consumer Price Index for
All Urban Consumers) and CW (Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage
Earners and Clerical Workers). Starting on February 24, the new
CPI item structure and coding system will be in place in the CU
and CW database. Complete historical information for all
continuous series, using the new coding structure, will continue
to reside in the CU and CW databases.
Two other databases, MU and MW will be
available on February 24. These databases will be set up using
the old item structure and coding system. They will contain
indexes through December 1997 for discontinued CPI series. For
the first six months of 1998, overlap indexes will be posted to
the MU and MW databases. See the Publication Strategy article in
the CPI Revision documents for more details.
MU and MW are accessible to users from the same
database tools as the CU and CW series (Series Report and
Create Customized Tables (mulitple screens) on the Web, and file transfer from our FTP
server).
Special "research" series (showing
some history using the new item structure) for Housing, Other
Goods and Services, Fuels and Utilities. Fruits and Vegetables,
and Household Furnishings and Operations will be available on our
FTP server in the "special requests/cpi" directory as
cpihistrsrch.txt.
For information about the databases, please
contact Sharon Gibson on (202) 606-6968 or by email.
Last Modified Date: June 16, 2003