Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers Research Series (CPI-U-RS)

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is the most commonly used measure of inflation in the United States. The BLS has made numerous improvements to the CPI-U over the years to make it more accurate, but the historical series is not adjusted to reflect those improvements. To provide researchers with a historical series in which prices are measured consistently over time, the BLS also produces the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers Research Series (CPI-U-RS). The CPI-U-RS is calculated from 1978 to the present, and it incorporates most of the methodological improvements made to the Consumer Price Index over that time span.

The U.S. Census Bureau derived the CPI-U-RS for years before 1977 by applying the 1977 CPI-U-RS-to-CPI-U ratio to the 1947 to 1976 CPI-U.

More information about the CPI-U-RS is available from the BLS.