Bloomberg built its own high-frequency version of the consumer price index

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts together the consumer price index (CPI), field agents collect approximately 80,000 price points each month — much of that work done by hand. And while the CPI is a benchmark inflation measurement (hence why we talk about it every month) that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

That’s where the Bloomberg Price Project comes in. It’s a new inflation measure that is attempting to use high-frequency data to get a deeper impression about inflation.

“Every month, we collect a couple million data points, and they range from grocery scanner prices to credit card data,” said Anna Wong, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Economics. “And [we] try to reconstruct the CPI in a similar spirit as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and see whether we track the BLS number.”

Headline inflation was up 0.4% in October according to the CPI, although the report was missing a year-over-year figure due to the government shutdown the year prior. Still, Wong estimates the Bloomberg Price Project saw inflation grow a little hotter than the government’s report.

“Because we track prices continuously since last year, we do have that number, and we have a headline reading of around 4.6% in October,” Wong said. “But I think the bottom line is that inflation is pretty hot.”

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke to Wong about the tracker and how private data is a supplement rather than a replacement for the federal data.

To listen to their conversation, use the media player above.