Federal Data Users

In case you missed it earlier this week, the White House decided to use a (very skewed) report from DoorDash to claim that "inflation has been tamed."

I, for one, am pretty sure that cherry picking data (the "breakfast index" is 3 eggs, 1 avocado, 1 bagel, and a glass of milk) doesn't accurately reflect grocery prices in the U.S.

This is just one more example of why scientifically-robust, well-documented, replicable public data are irreplaceable.

NEW DATA: Lower Prices, Bigger Paychecks

The White House		remove preview
NEW DATA: Lower Prices, Bigger Paychecks President Donald J. Trump's bold economic agenda is delivering real results for American families - with new data from DoorDash's State of Local Commerce View this on The White House >

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Beth Jarosz
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Yes. Bundles and prices matter.  Unfortunately, this breakfast example could be accurate, but it is all due to the falling price of eggs (a dozen eggs has fallen 44% between March and Sept - the last 6 months).  This demonstrates the importance of BLS CPI data.  They produce average price series for a variety of food products, and you could create your breakfast index - or even the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner.  For example, one dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, pound of tomatoes (no average price for avocados) and a pound of bread (no bagels) has fallen 17%, but if you included a pound of ground coffee (increased 24% over the past 6 months) and can of fzn OJ that basically wipes out the price decrease (now -2%), and obviously if you use the CPI for food at home, that has increased in the past 6 months.  BLS provides a wonderland of data for us to make the right comparisons and decisions.

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David Johnson
International Association for Research in Income a
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