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What a dollar buys

One inflation rate hides five different economies. The categories a household cannot opt out of have run far ahead of the average, and the ones it can have collapsed.

Updated September 4, 2026

+105%

Rent

Since 2005

+104%

College tuition

Since 2005

+70%

All items

Since 2005

-75%

Computers

Since 2005

Five prices, one currency

Every line starts at 100 in 2005, so the gap between them is the whole story. A household that spends most of its income on tuition, care and rent has lived through a different decade than the headline rate describes.

Index, 2005 = 100

106211416721920052008201120142017202020232026College tuitionMedical careRentAll itemsComputers
College tuitionMedical careRentAll itemsComputers
Consumer Price Index by category, annual averages, indexed to 2005. Hover for any year. 2026 averages the 7 months published so far.

How this was built

Each category is a Consumer Price Index series for all urban consumers, US city average, not seasonally adjusted. Monthly values are averaged into annual figures and every series is then indexed to 100 in the base year, which puts categories with different natural scales on one axis. The unregistered BLS endpoint returns ten years per request, so the span is stitched from consecutive windows. The current year averages only the months BLS has published so far, so its final point is a year to date figure rather than a full twelve month average.

Sources