Impacts of COVID-19 on collection and missing data in the CPI

This article presents novel measures of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Consumer Price Index. One measure estimates the difference between prices collected online and prices collected in person. Another measure results from an alternative imputation method used when no sample is present for a component. A new metric for sample completeness illustrates the deterioration in the sample size more comprehensively than existing metrics. Lastly, this article presents the disparate impact of the pandemic on goods compared with services, in terms of data availability. The COVID-19 pandemic presented unique challenges to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in compiling the Consumer Price Index (CPI).1 In March 2020, in-person data collection ceased almost overnight at brick-and-mortar stores and switched to online collection, increasing the rate of survey nonresponse and missing data in the CPI surveys.