Inflation
CPI — August 2026
Released September 11, 2026 · 8:30 AM ET · Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The read · narrated
The read
Core inflation just fell to its lowest since twenty twenty-one. Fuel oil is up fifty-two percent. Both are in this morning’s report. Only one matters much.
The print. Consumer prices rose four tenths in August; the annual rate held at three point four. Core — food and energy out — rose three tenths, its annual rate down to two point four. Lowest since March twenty twenty-one.
The energy side isn’t all energy. Gasoline up twenty-seven percent over the year, fuel oil fifty-two. But electricity three point eight, piped gas four point four. Pipe and wire barely moved.
Now, how much of that reaches you. Picture a hundred dollars of everything a household buys. Fuel oil is eleven cents of it — fifty-two percent of eleven cents is nothing. Gasoline is three dollars seventy-seven. And that one-point gap between headline and core? With food at two point seven, it’s mostly energy.
Core strips energy out. It doesn’t strip out what energy touches. Airline fares rose two point seven percent in August alone, twenty-three on the year. Jet fuel in a different hat — about a dollar of the hundred.
Now the lines a borrowing cost actually reaches. Used cars, down two point three over the year. New vehicles, up six tenths. Motor vehicle insurance, which led core two years ago, down five point one.
And the line that decides core is none of those. Out of that hundred dollars, shelter is thirty-five. It’s running three point oh, down from three point four in May. Last month we asked if that would reach the annual rate. It did.
Be fair to the other side. Gasoline is the price households check most often, and rates do work on expectations — the five-year breakeven went into this print at its highest since June.
And the headline-core gap doesn’t tell you how it resolves. It’s been a point or wider seventy-seven times since nineteen ninety-eight. A year later, core had gone up as often as down.
So, plainly. A funds rate works on borrowing and demand. It does not produce a barrel of oil. What’s elevated here is the part a rate can’t reach. What it can reach is already cooling.
Watch whether fuel stays in the fuel lines. Wednesday, the Fed decides.
| Measure | Latest | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Headline CPI | +0.4% m/m · +3.4% y/y | — unchanged — energy is the whole gap to core |
| Core CPI (ex food & energy) | +0.3% m/m · +2.4% y/y | ▼ lowest since March 2021 — shelter 3.4% → 3.0% |
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, August 2026, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, released September 11, 2026, pulled from the BLS API. The print. All items +0.4% on the month and 3.4% over 12 months, unchanged from July; core — all items less food and energy — +0.3% and 2.4%, its lowest since March 2021. Twelve-month changes are not seasonally adjusted, following the headline convention; monthly changes are seasonally adjusted. Spoken and displayed figures are the official published changes; plotted series are computed from the index levels, date-keyed month against year-ago month. Energy. The energy index rose 16.3% over the year: gasoline 27.4%, fuel oil 52.0%, utility (piped) gas service 4.4%, electricity 3.8%. “Fuel oil” is CUUR0000SEHE01; the adjacent CUUR0000SEHE is “fuel oil and other fuels” and reads 30.2% — a different index, not used here. The basket weights are BLS relative importance as of July 2026, taken from the release’s own Table 1: shelter 35.343 of 100, gasoline 3.770, new vehicles 3.756, used cars and trucks 2.698, motor vehicle insurance 2.563, electricity 2.551, airline fares 1.049, utility gas 0.752, fuel oil 0.107. These are not available through the BLS timeseries API and are cited from the published table. They are spoken as dollars of a $100 basket because that is what a relative importance is. Inside core. Airline fares rose 2.7% on the month (seasonally adjusted) and 23.4% over the year; airline fares sit inside core even though energy does not, which is the point the read makes. Used cars and trucks −2.3% over the year, new vehicles +0.6%, motor vehicle insurance −5.1% and −0.8% on the month. Shelter 3.0% over the year, against 3.4% in May; its August step down of 0.2 points is the largest monthly decline in its annual rate so far in 2026, and it answers the question our August 12 read closed on. On what a policy rate reaches. This page makes a compositional statement, not a policy recommendation and not a forecast: it observes which categories are elevated and which of them are priced by credit. It does not claim energy is unimportant. Core is defined as all items less food and energy, so the full one-point gap between the headline and core is food and energy combined — and with food at 2.7%, below the 3.4% headline, energy accounts for effectively all of it. The precedent is computed on the same pair the read names: since 1998 the headline-core gap has been 1.0 point or wider in 77 prior months; of the 75 with a 12-month follow-on, core stood higher a year later in 39 and lower or level in 36. The gap does not settle the question on its own. Market data is Thursday’s close, deliberately. The 5-year breakeven inflation rate (FRED T5YIE) was 2.46% on September 10, its highest since June 8; that is the level the market carried into this print, not a reaction to it — Treasury posts the daily curve after this page was built. The Federal Reserve next decides on September 16.