The Labor Department says staffing shortages reduced its ability to conduct its massive monthly survey, forcing it to turn to less precise guesses.

The reduction in in-person price checks that usually account for 60% of CPI data is "raising concerns among economists about the quality of the inflation figures ju

Key Takeaways President Donald Trump's federal hiring freeze has forced the Bureau of Labor Statistics to cut back on collecting consumer price information.Economists have raised concerns that key data on inflation and other important measures of the economy will become less accurate because of Trump's policies.