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2025-09-16 03:38:35
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is hiring part-time staff to collect data for a key inflation indicator, which has increasingly relied on statistical imputation to fill data gaps due to staff turnover. The bureau has posted 25 job postings nationwide for part-time economic assistants, who will be responsible for collecting price data for the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Positions will be located in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago. These positions are crucial for obtaining price information from local businesses. Omer Sharif, president of Inflation Insights LLC, an inflation research firm, said that if these positions are filled quickly, the proportion of imputed prices in the CPI is likely to decline significantly in the coming months, significantly reducing the margin of error for the current estimate. The BLS announced in June that it had suspended price collection in three metropolitan areas due to a lack of resources in those areas.
