Shelter CPI

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shelter index tracks rents and the rent-equivalent value of owned homes for people in cities and suburbs. In August 2026 shelter prices were 3% higher than a year earlier. The yearly rate is down from 3.6% in August 2025. It edged down from 3.2% in July 2026, too small a move to call a turn. It is the lowest rate since August 2021.

A rate above zero means shelter prices are still going up, even when the rate is lower than before. They have not come down. In March 2023 the yearly rate was 8.2%.

Shelter is the largest item in the CPI basket, about 36% of its weight in December 2025. Most of it is owners' equivalent rent: BLS estimates what owned homes would rent for from the rents it collects on rented homes, so no homeowner pays it. Rent of primary residence is about a fifth of shelter; hotels and tenants' insurance make up the rest. The index leaves out home prices, mortgage payments and property taxes; the price of newly built homes is tracked separately in Median Sale Price of New Houses. It measures price change, not what any household pays or how hard it is to pay; a Census survey reports the share of households having difficulty paying usual expenses.

We compute the yearly change from the seasonally adjusted index, so it can differ slightly from the 12-month figure BLS headlines, which uses the unadjusted index. There is no figure for October 2025, when the federal government shutdown stopped data collection. BLS carried rents forward for that month, so the yearly changes for November 2025 through March 2026 understate the true change.