Just a quick update on inflation in Oregon, as the latest Portland-Salem data for 2013 became available last week. For more information see the previous post on inflation in Oregon.
First up is the more commonly used and reported measure of CPI-U for all urban consumers, which rose 2.2% year-over-year in the first half of 2013.
The second measure of inflation, CPI-W, is for urban wage earners and clerical workers, which rose 1.9% year-over-year. This measure is sometimes used as a cost-of-living adjustment in labor contracts and is designed to cover a smaller subset of the population. Specifically, those who are employed and earn most of their income from wages.
Mark McMullen
Josh Lehner
Oregon Office of Economic Analysis 
When I was with the City of Salem, we used the CPI-W as a labor contract escalator. However, instead of the Portland-Salem series, we used the “Western Cities of Size Class B and C” series. I love the graph showing the weighting of each component. I might have to steal that! Such a graph might come in handy in a discussion of cost disease.
By: Doug Gabbard on August 23, 2013
at 11:06 AM
Thanks Doug. It is a shame BLS is not able to compile data for more locations, however tedious the tasks may be, since they certainly are useful in a lot of analyses.
By: Josh Lehner on August 23, 2013
at 11:47 AM