consumer price index
noun
: an index measuring the change in the cost of typical wage-earner purchases of goods and services expressed as a percentage of the cost of these same goods and services in some base period
—abbreviation CPI
called also cost-of-living index
Examples of consumer price index in a Sentence
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Brendan McDermid | Reuters The Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning will release January’s consumer price index, which — like Wednesday’s jobs report — was delayed by the recent government shutdown.
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Josephine Rozzelle, CNBC, 13 Feb. 2026
The Social Security Administration bases its COLA each year on the average annual increases in a subset of the overall consumer price index called the index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, from July through September.
—Medora Lee, USA Today, 13 Feb. 2026
And on Friday, the consumer price index for January will come out.
—Jason Ma, Fortune, 9 Feb. 2026
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly consumer price index, which uses human data collectors and includes other food product categories, is another resource for average price data.
—Joe Murphy, NBC news, 8 Feb. 2026
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Josephine Rozzelle, CNBC, 13 Feb. 2026
The Social Security Administration bases its COLA each year on the average annual increases in a subset of the overall consumer price index called the index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, from July through September.
—Medora Lee, USA Today, 13 Feb. 2026
And on Friday, the consumer price index for January will come out.
—Jason Ma, Fortune, 9 Feb. 2026
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly consumer price index, which uses human data collectors and includes other food product categories, is another resource for average price data.
—Joe Murphy, NBC news, 8 Feb. 2026
See All Example Sentences for consumer price index
Cite this Entry
“Consumer price index.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consumer%20price%20index. Accessed 14 Feb. 2026.
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