What is the Seattle CPI?
In addition to the national CPI, the BLS publishes CPI statistics for 26 of the nation’s metropolitan areas. However, it does not compute the CPI for states. For the Seattle area, the BLS computes both the CPI-U and the CPI-W for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, Washington, metropolitan area, which includes Island, King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston Counties. In 2000, this area was home to 3.6 million people, which is 60 percent of the states total population. Consumer price indexes for metropolitan areas are significantly more volatile than the national index because substantially fewer goods and services are analyzed when computing a metropolitan-area CPI vs. a national CPI. Using fewer items to assess price changes results in substantially more sampling and measurement error.
