Co-Chairs of the Friends of BLS Statement on the CPI Estimates for November 2025
Many of the Friends of BLS follow the Bureau’s publications and press statements very closely. So do many who have not yet found the Friends but nevertheless value what BLS does, particularly in the arena of price indexes. Some controversy, principally in the financial community and among these devotees of BLS, erupted on December 30 following release by BLS of a highly informative Q&A that addressed how the Bureau handled missing price observations for October when estimating the November 2025 CPI. BLS used estimation techniques that, according to some critics, lowered the rate of growth for housing components in a way that suggested to these critics that possible political pressure had been brought on the Bureau.
We, the co-chairs of the Friends, have dug deeply into these adjustments and find no reason to see the hand of politics anywhere in the Bureau’s CPI work, either recently or in the more distant past.
Our statement today is intended to clarify events regarding the Rent and Owners Equivalent Rent (OER) estimation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for November 2025. Let’s start with a recital of what BLS has done.
Due to the 2025 lapse in funding, BLS was unable to collect price information, including rents, for October 2025 CPI.
On December 18, 2025, BLS released the CPI estimates for November 2025, along with information on the impact of the shutdown on the estimates.
On December 30, 2025, BLS posted on this web FAQ page additional information on how it calculated Rent and OER for November without rent information from October. Unfortunately, the additional information included an error in the answer to question 8, which concerns the OER calculation. Readers noted a problem with the OER calculation as described and sent questions to BLS leadership about it.
On December 31, 2025, BLS posted an errata and corrected the narrative in the web FAQ page to reflect what the BLS actually did.
What some critics saw as possible political manipulation turned out to a wording error in the Q&A. While many will continue to question the technique that BLS used for estimating missing data under these extraordinary circumstances, the “finding” of an exceptional downward estimate for October proved, instead, to be the effects of a correctable error.
As Co-Chairs of the Friends of BLS, we have full confidence in the expertise and integrity of the staff and leaders of the BLS. Their performance during duress, short staffing, and inadequate resources has been exemplary. Yet they are human.
Concerns about political manipulation at BLS are unfounded. We are watching carefully and promise to alert users to any credible evidence of manipulation.
Erica L Groshen
William Beach
Paul Schroeder