---
ticker: "USTRIMPCE"
title: "U.S. Trimmed-Mean PCE Inflation Rate"
unit: "%"
frequency: "Monthly"
source: "Bryan and Cecchetti (1994); Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins (1997)"
release: "Updated Monthly"
category: "Consumer & Producer Prices"
country: "US"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://kred.dev/en/series/USTRIMPCE"
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"
latest_value: 2.19
latest_date: "2026-08-01"
first_date: "1978-01-01"
observations_total: 584
observations_shown: 120
---

# U.S. Trimmed-Mean PCE Inflation Rate

## Overview

A trimmed-mean estimator of underlying US consumption inflation, reported as a 12-month rate rather than an index level, descriptive and not a forecast.

## Key Figures

|  | Value | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Latest | 2.19 | 2026-08-01 |
| Change from previous | -0.09 | 2026-07-01 |
| Change over one year | -0.66 | 2025-08-01 |
| Highest on record | 8.72 | 1980-06-01 |
| Lowest on record | 0.80 | 2010-10-01 |
| Period covered | 1978-01-01 – 2026-08-01 |  |
| Observations | 584 |  |

## Recent observations

| Date | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2016-09-01 | 1.74 | +0.03 |
| 2016-10-01 | 1.82 | +0.08 |
| 2016-11-01 | 1.85 | +0.03 |
| 2016-12-01 | 1.91 | +0.06 |
| 2017-01-01 | 1.95 | +0.04 |
| 2017-02-01 | 1.91 | -0.04 |
| 2017-03-01 | 1.84 | -0.07 |
| 2017-04-01 | 1.78 | -0.06 |
| 2017-05-01 | 1.68 | -0.10 |
| 2017-06-01 | 1.68 | 0.00 |
| 2017-07-01 | 1.64 | -0.04 |
| 2017-08-01 | 1.64 | 0.00 |
| 2017-09-01 | 1.63 | -0.01 |
| 2017-10-01 | 1.63 | 0.00 |
| 2017-11-01 | 1.65 | +0.02 |
| 2017-12-01 | 1.66 | +0.01 |
| 2018-01-01 | 1.72 | +0.06 |
| 2018-02-01 | 1.75 | +0.03 |
| 2018-03-01 | 1.79 | +0.04 |
| 2018-04-01 | 1.76 | -0.03 |
| 2018-05-01 | 1.86 | +0.10 |
| 2018-06-01 | 1.90 | +0.04 |
| 2018-07-01 | 1.93 | +0.03 |
| 2018-08-01 | 1.93 | 0.00 |
| 2018-09-01 | 1.94 | +0.01 |
| 2018-10-01 | 1.96 | +0.02 |
| 2018-11-01 | 2.02 | +0.06 |
| 2018-12-01 | 2.02 | 0.00 |
| 2019-01-01 | 1.91 | -0.11 |
| 2019-02-01 | 1.97 | +0.06 |
| 2019-03-01 | 2.01 | +0.04 |
| 2019-04-01 | 2.13 | +0.12 |
| 2019-05-01 | 2.04 | -0.09 |
| 2019-06-01 | 2.00 | -0.04 |
| 2019-07-01 | 2.04 | +0.04 |
| 2019-08-01 | 2.05 | +0.01 |
| 2019-09-01 | 1.99 | -0.06 |
| 2019-10-01 | 1.97 | -0.02 |
| 2019-11-01 | 1.88 | -0.09 |
| 2019-12-01 | 1.88 | 0.00 |
| 2020-01-01 | 1.93 | +0.05 |
| 2020-02-01 | 1.93 | 0.00 |
| 2020-03-01 | 1.85 | -0.08 |
| 2020-04-01 | 1.73 | -0.12 |
| 2020-05-01 | 1.79 | +0.06 |
| 2020-06-01 | 1.79 | 0.00 |
| 2020-07-01 | 1.84 | +0.05 |
| 2020-08-01 | 1.84 | 0.00 |
| 2020-09-01 | 1.85 | +0.01 |
| 2020-10-01 | 1.80 | -0.05 |
| 2020-11-01 | 1.75 | -0.05 |
| 2020-12-01 | 1.74 | -0.01 |
| 2021-01-01 | 1.71 | -0.03 |
| 2021-02-01 | 1.70 | -0.01 |
| 2021-03-01 | 1.80 | +0.10 |
| 2021-04-01 | 1.91 | +0.11 |
| 2021-05-01 | 1.98 | +0.07 |
| 2021-06-01 | 2.06 | +0.08 |
| 2021-07-01 | 2.11 | +0.05 |
| 2021-08-01 | 2.20 | +0.09 |
| 2021-09-01 | 2.44 | +0.24 |
| 2021-10-01 | 2.72 | +0.28 |
| 2021-11-01 | 2.97 | +0.25 |
| 2021-12-01 | 3.23 | +0.26 |
| 2022-01-01 | 3.57 | +0.34 |
| 2022-02-01 | 3.78 | +0.21 |
| 2022-03-01 | 3.87 | +0.09 |
| 2022-04-01 | 3.94 | +0.07 |
| 2022-05-01 | 4.12 | +0.18 |
| 2022-06-01 | 4.52 | +0.40 |
| 2022-07-01 | 4.63 | +0.11 |
| 2022-08-01 | 4.85 | +0.22 |
| 2022-09-01 | 4.85 | 0.00 |
| 2022-10-01 | 4.85 | 0.00 |
| 2022-11-01 | 4.82 | -0.03 |
| 2022-12-01 | 4.76 | -0.06 |
| 2023-01-01 | 4.67 | -0.09 |
| 2023-02-01 | 4.60 | -0.07 |
| 2023-03-01 | 4.67 | +0.07 |
| 2023-04-01 | 4.71 | +0.04 |
| 2023-05-01 | 4.62 | -0.09 |
| 2023-06-01 | 4.23 | -0.39 |
| 2023-07-01 | 4.07 | -0.16 |
| 2023-08-01 | 3.80 | -0.27 |
| 2023-09-01 | 3.72 | -0.08 |
| 2023-10-01 | 3.54 | -0.18 |
| 2023-11-01 | 3.46 | -0.08 |
| 2023-12-01 | 3.28 | -0.18 |
| 2024-01-01 | 3.32 | +0.04 |
| 2024-02-01 | 3.23 | -0.09 |
| 2024-03-01 | 3.16 | -0.07 |
| 2024-04-01 | 3.05 | -0.11 |
| 2024-05-01 | 2.96 | -0.09 |
| 2024-06-01 | 2.94 | -0.02 |
| 2024-07-01 | 2.88 | -0.06 |
| 2024-08-01 | 2.87 | -0.01 |
| 2024-09-01 | 2.88 | +0.01 |
| 2024-10-01 | 2.93 | +0.05 |
| 2024-11-01 | 2.94 | +0.01 |
| 2024-12-01 | 3.03 | +0.09 |
| 2025-01-01 | 2.80 | -0.23 |
| 2025-02-01 | 2.78 | -0.02 |
| 2025-03-01 | 2.73 | -0.05 |
| 2025-04-01 | 2.76 | +0.03 |
| 2025-05-01 | 2.72 | -0.04 |
| 2025-06-01 | 2.80 | +0.08 |
| 2025-07-01 | 2.79 | -0.01 |
| 2025-08-01 | 2.85 | +0.06 |
| 2025-09-01 | 2.76 | -0.09 |
| 2025-10-01 | 2.60 | -0.16 |
| 2025-11-01 | 2.52 | -0.08 |
| 2025-12-01 | 2.47 | -0.05 |
| 2026-01-01 | 2.45 | -0.02 |
| 2026-02-01 | 2.38 | -0.07 |
| 2026-03-01 | 2.36 | -0.02 |
| 2026-04-01 | 2.38 | +0.02 |
| 2026-05-01 | 2.44 | +0.06 |
| 2026-06-01 | 2.28 | -0.16 |
| 2026-07-01 | 2.28 | 0.00 |
| 2026-08-01 | 2.19 | -0.09 |

## Definition

USTRIMPCE is the published trimmed-mean measure of consumption price inflation recorded as-is, a percent change from a year earlier rather than an index level, so it carries no reference base and is not comparable in units with the index levels served beside it. The published rate is seasonally adjusted at source and KRED adds nothing to it.

The measure belongs to the class of limited-influence estimators, which summarize the central tendency of the cross-section of component price changes by discarding the observations in both tails before averaging, and which were introduced because that cross-section is strongly non-normal and its ordinary weighted mean is dominated by a few large relative-price moves (Bryan and Cecchetti 1994). How much weight to discard follows from the kurtosis of the price-change distribution being summarized (Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins 1997).

The object being trimmed is the cross-section of component price changes underlying a chain-type consumption price index, the same aggregate whose level is served as USPCEPI, and the weights that locate the cut points in that cross-section are the expenditure shares of the chained construction (Hill 1988; Törnqvist 1936). The index-number formulas that define such an aggregate remain the base-weighted, current-weighted, ideal, and superlative forms (Laspeyres 1871; Paasche 1874; Fisher 1922; Diewert 1976), and the economic target of the underlying price measure is the expenditure ratio that holds utility fixed (Konüs 1939).

The concept the estimator addresses is underlying inflation, defined originally as the rate prevailing on the economy's long-run growth path with supply shocks absent and demand neutral (Eckstein 1981), framed elsewhere as measured inflation decomposed into trend plus transitory disturbance plus bias (Cecchetti 1997), identified structurally as the component with no long-run effect on real output (Quah and Vahey 1995), and modeled as the permanent component of an unobserved-components stochastic-volatility decomposition (Stock and Watson 2007).

The series is a descriptive gauge of the central tendency of the current cross-section of price changes and nothing more. It is not a forecast of headline inflation, no accuracy or superiority claim attaches to it, and any comparison with the headline rate is left to the reader.

Within its group the series is the one rate among index levels, and it reaches the underlying-inflation concept by trimming whichever components are extreme in the current month rather than by deleting the same named strata every month, which is the route the exclusion-based core measures take.

## Methodology

KRED applies no transformation to USTRIMPCE and stores the published rate exactly as recorded. It performs no conversion of the rate into an index, no re-annualizing, no smoothing, and no re-trimming, and it applies no seasonal filter of its own. The trimming belongs to the measurement basis by which the number comes to exist and is not a KRED computation.

That basis is a limited-influence estimator of the central tendency of the cross-sectional distribution of component price changes, in which the components are ordered by the size of their price change, expenditure weight is cumulated along that ordering until a set share has been discarded from each tail, and the remaining components are averaged with their weights (Bryan and Cecchetti 1994). How much weight to discard follows from the kurtosis of the distribution being summarized (Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins 1997), and the reason for discarding at all is that measured inflation is trend plus transitory disturbance plus bias (Cecchetti 1997).

The distribution being trimmed comes from a chain-linked consumption price aggregate, whose weights are the expenditure shares of adjacent periods and whose construction is the chained index-number practice of the national accounts (Hill 1988; Törnqvist 1936).

The base-weighted and current-weighted forms and the symmetric ideal index built from them are the formulas against which such an aggregate is read (Laspeyres 1871; Paasche 1874; Fisher 1922), and the superlative family they belong to is exact for flexible aggregators (Diewert 1976).

The taxonomy within which the underlying index is placed and the axiomatic properties it satisfies are set out in the index-number literature (Diewert 2002; Balk 1995), and the economic target of the price measure remains the expenditure ratio that holds utility fixed (Konüs 1939).

The alternative routes to the same underlying-inflation concept delete named strata before aggregation (Eckstein 1981), identify the component structurally by its long-run neutrality for real output (Quah and Vahey 1995), or extract a permanent component with an unobserved-components stochastic-volatility decomposition (Stock and Watson 2007). None of these constructions are applied to USTRIMPCE itself, which remains at the recorded rate.

## Applications in Economics

The series is read as a gauge of the persistent component of consumption price inflation, the concept defined as the rate on the economy's long-run growth path once supply shocks are absent and demand is neutral (Eckstein 1981) and framed as trend plus transitory disturbance plus bias in the measurement literature (Cecchetti 1997).

The trimming route to that concept keeps every component in the basket and discards only the extreme realizations of the current month, which is what makes it robust to asymmetric supply shocks (Bryan and Cecchetti 1994), with the amount trimmed set by the kurtosis of the price-change distribution (Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins 1997).

Alternative readings of the same concept identify it structurally as the part of inflation with no long-run effect on real output (Quah and Vahey 1995) or as the permanent component of an unobserved-components decomposition (Stock and Watson 2007), and the three readings need not coincide in any given month.

Because the underlying aggregate is a chain-type consumption price index, the rate inherits that aggregate's weighting rule and its coverage, and the substitution and quality-change biases that separate any measured price index from the cost-of-living target carry through to it (Hill 1988; Konüs 1939; Diewert 1998; Boskin et al. 1996).

Where a headline level anchors expectations through the index-number foundations that define it, the trimmed rate is read alongside that level rather than in place of it (Diewert 2002; Fisher 1922). The series is descriptive of the current cross-section and is never presented as a forecast, so no claim is made here about how it performs against future headline inflation.

## Applications in Financial Markets

For market participants the value of a trimmed-mean rate lies in its signal-to-noise property, since a monthly headline print mixes a persistent component with transitory relative-price moves and the trimmed rate discards the extremes of the latter before averaging (Cecchetti 1997; Bryan and Cecchetti 1994; Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins 1997).

Desks that price inflation-linked instruments and breakevens settle on headline outcomes rather than on any underlying-inflation measure, so the trimmed rate enters the analysis as a read on the persistent component and not as a settlement reference (Eckstein 1981; Quah and Vahey 1995; Stock and Watson 2007).

What a contract deflates with or settles on is an index level rather than a rate, and the properties that govern such a level are the reversal tests, the share-weighted superlative form, the exactness of that family for flexible aggregators, and the axiomatic consistency of successive vintages (Fisher 1922; Törnqvist 1936; Diewert 1976; Balk 1995).

The substitution and quality-change wedge that separates a measured index from the cost-of-living target is carried by the trimmed rate as well, so a real-return calculation built on it inherits the same bias (Diewert 1998; Boskin et al. 1996; Konüs 1939). The rate is used as a descriptive gauge of the current central tendency of price changes, never as a forecast of the inflation a contract will settle on.

## Statistical Tests

The trimmed-mean personal consumption expenditures inflation rate is a twelve-month rate published as its own series rather than an index level, and it is read as a descriptive gauge of the central tendency of the current price-change distribution, never as a forecast and never with any accuracy claim attached (Bryan, Cecchetti, and Wiggins 1997; Meyer and Venkatu 2014; Meyer, Venkatu, and Zaman 2013). The sample is 581 monthly observations spanning 1978-01-01 to 2026-05-01, and the unit-root triplet is fitted on the level of the rate with a constant and trend. The augmented Dickey-Fuller test of Dickey and Fuller (1979), in the lag-augmented form of Said and Dickey (1984) with lag length set as in Ng and Perron (2001), does not reject a unit root with a statistic of −3.00271 at p = 0.131326, the nonparametric test of Phillips and Perron (1988) concurs with a statistic of −2.12271 at p = 0.533356, and the stationarity-null test rejects with a statistic of 0.522642 at p < 0.01 (Kwiatkowski et al. 1992), so the three procedures concur and a clean I(1) verdict is assigned on this sample. The GLS-detrended escalation of Elliott, Rothenberg, and Stock (1996) is reserved for ambiguous outcomes and is not required on this clean reading.

The rate itself is the candidate stationary object for this class of series, so the portmanteau and the break search are run on its level. The portmanteau statistic of Ljung and Box (1978), refining the form of Box and Pierce (1970), rejects the no-autocorrelation null at lags 12 and 24, with Q = 6277.07 and Q = 10335.6 and p = 0.000 in both cases, the very strong dependence a twelve-month moving construction carries by design. The multiple-break procedure of Bai and Perron (1998), computed by the dynamic-programming algorithm of Bai and Perron (2003), locates four mean shifts on the level, at 1985-04-01, 1992-07-01, 2009-06-01, and 2019-03-01, read as inflation-regime shifts rather than as evidence about integration order (Perron 1989). Both level diagnostics sit on an object the triplet does not certify as stationary, so both are reported as descriptive of a persistent rate rather than as stationarity evidence.

Because the twelve-month construction is itself the seasonal-differencing filter that removes the seasonal unit roots the HEGY class interrogates, the HEGY seasonal-unit-root test and the Canova and Hansen (1995) seasonal-stationarity test are deliberately not run, since testing for seasonal unit roots the transform has already annihilated is circular (Hylleberg et al. 1990; Ghysels and Osborn 2001). The residual and evolving-seasonality companions are not part of the pinned battery recorded for this member, so no claim is made about residual seasonality in either direction. The loss-differential comparison of Diebold and Mariano (1995) and the unbiasedness regression of Mincer and Zarnowitz (1969) were likewise not run on this member, so the series carries no forecast-performance claim and no predictive claim at any horizon. The series is published only as a descriptive trend gauge for reading the price-change distribution and never as a forecast (Atkeson and Ohanian 2001; Rich and Steindel 2007).

## Frequently Asked Questions

### What does the US price panel include?

The United States price panel, comprising headline and core consumer and producer price indices, the personal consumption expenditure price indices, and three limited-influence inflation measures.

### Are the limited-influence inflation measures published as index levels?

No. They are published as twelve-month rates, so placing them on the same axis as the index levels in this group misreads both.

### Do the US limited-influence inflation gauges all measure the same thing?

No. They are separate estimands, differing in the underlying price index as well as in the rule for which part of the distribution to set aside. Proximity between any two of them is not corroboration and divergence is not an error in any.