How governments actually measure and compute inflation is a complex and fascinating topic on its own. Here's a great overview of how it's done in the USA: https

How governments actually measure and compute inflation is a complex and fascinating topic on its own. Here's a great overview of how it's done in the USA: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/28/how-does-the-government-measure-inflation/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/28/how-does-... Basically, each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) hires people to manually look up the price (online, in person, of by telephone) of 80 thousand different items, then computes a weighted average price change. The weights come from the Consumer Expenditures Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the BLS) of 8 thousand households to collect data on how much they spend on what.