On July 12, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that headline inflation had fallen to 3.0% year-on-year (YoY) from 9.1% in June 2022. Core inflation, however, remained elevated at 4.8% YoY albeit improving a touch from 5.9% last June. What the BLS did not highlight was that core inflation was, in fact, much lower when viewed through an “experimental” data series: the harmonized core Consumer Price Index (Figure 1). The harmonized core Consumer Price Index, which excludes the imputed rent paid by homeowners known as Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER), shows that core inflation is only 2.3% YoY, less than half the ... (full story)