The October 2026 consumer price index report is set for release on Tuesday, November 10, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and for the first time in years it will not carry a 12-month inflation rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics cannot calculate the annual change because last year's shutdown left a hole where October 2025 prices should be. The number most households and markets watch, the year-over-year rate, simply is not there this month.

Why the yearly number is missing

The annual rate compares this October with the same month a year earlier. That math needs an October 2025 reading, and the government never produced one. The lapse in federal funding ran from October 1 to November 12, 2025, and froze most of the statistical agency's work.

The BLS lays this out plainly in its own guidance. "BLS could not collect October 2025 reference period survey data," the agency says, because "most CPI operations, including data collection, were suspended during that time period." It adds that "BLS did not issue an October 2025 CPI news release." With no base month to compare against, the agency says it "will not publish 12-month percent changes for October 2026 for indexes where October 2025 data are not available."

That caveat reaches the core measure too, the one that strips out food and energy and that the Federal Reserve leans on most. Where the October 2025 figure is missing, the yearly change for October 2026 cannot be computed.

The damage is not uniform across the report. To fill the October 2025 gap for its index levels, the BLS has said survey data for commodities and services were carried forward to October 2025 from September 2025 in affected categories. That keeps the index series continuous, but it is a workaround, not a fresh reading, and it is the reason the agency is being cautious about annual comparisons rather than simply publishing them with a footnote. Readers should expect the missing-rate flag to show up unevenly, category by category, through the tables.

What the report still shows

The release is not blank. The month-over-month change, the move from September to October, does not depend on last year's data, so that part of the picture survives. Economists surveyed by news outlets ahead of the release expected the one-month headline index to rise about 0.3% and the core index about 0.2%. Those are expectations reported in the financial press, not official figures, and the real numbers land with the report itself.

For context on where the trend stood, the last month with a complete annual reading was September 2026, when the headline 12-month CPI rate was 3.7%. Our earlier look at the September inflation print walks through what was pushing that number. Readers who want the mechanics of how the basket is built and weighted can start with our explainer on how inflation is measured.

Why a missing rate matters

The 12-month rate is the headline for a reason. It smooths out the noise of any single month and tells a clearer story about whether the cost of living is still climbing faster than wages. Lose it, and the read on inflation gets grainier. A single monthly change can run hot or cold for reasons that wash out over a year, so analysts will have to work harder to separate signal from noise this time.

The timing also lands close to a Federal Reserve decision. The policy committee next meets on December 9 and 10, 2026, and officials weigh inflation data heavily when they set the target range for the federal funds rate. A cleaner inflation signal would have helped that debate; a partial one leaves more room for interpretation. The desk does not forecast what the Fed will do, and neither this report nor any single data point decides it on its own.

How to read the release yourself

The primary document is free and public. The BLS posts the CPI news release on its website the morning of the print, and the full data series live on the Federal Reserve's FRED database, where anyone can chart the monthly and, where available, annual changes. When you open it, look first at the seasonally adjusted one-month change for the all-items index, then at the core index, and treat any figure described as a 12-month change with care this month, because for many categories that comparison is not being published at all.

The gap is temporary. As the calendar moves past the shutdown window, the missing base months age out and the annual rate returns to the release. Until then, the monthly change is the cleaner of the two numbers, because it does not reach back into the period the data collectors missed.

One more caution worth keeping in mind: the preview many outlets ran, including our own October CPI report preview, framed expectations before the numbers existed. Expectations are not results. Wait for the released figures before drawing any conclusion about the path of prices.