The Cost of Living series is built from official US price statistics, distributed through the Federal Reserve's data service and updated as each agency releases.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
Produces Consumer Price Index, Producer Price Index, import and export price indices, and the Employment Cost Index · Monthly for prices; quarterly for the Employment Cost Index
BLS field economists collect around 80,000 price quotes a month from retail outlets and service establishments for the CPI, with the basket weights set by the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Producer and labour-cost indices come from establishment surveys of firms and employers.
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
Produces The distribution layer for the official series above, alongside hundreds of thousands of other economic series · Updated automatically as each underlying source publishes
Run by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED ingests each agency's official release, aligns vintages and units, and serves them through a consistent public API. Encyclix reads the FRED copy, so every chart traces back to the original agency figure.
The repair-cost composite in Episode 5 is an Encyclix-derived blend of construction-materials, vehicle, medical and shelter costs; it has no single official source.
United States