It’s no secret that the Federal Reserve relies heavily on numbers. The unemployment rate, the rate of economic growth and the inflation rate are just a few of the figures the Fed considers when setting the course of U.S. monetary policy.

When President Donald Trump summoned Fed Chair Jerome Powell to the Oval Office last week, the president was laser-focused on one number — the federal funds rate, which is the benchmark overnight lending rate that the Fed has kept in the range of 4.25% to 4.5% since December 2024.

Trump reportedly pressured Powell to cut the fed funds rate, which Trump hopes will have the desired effect of lowering borrowing costs and stimulating the economy. But Powell and his fellow Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members have exercised caution thus far in 2025, in part because inflation remains above its stated 2% target and a rate cut may compromise that goal.

The path of monetary policy “will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the Fed said in a statement released after Powell’s meeting at the White House.

But what happens if that incoming economic information is unreliable?

According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, several economists noticed irregularities in the April consumer price index (CPI) report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the U.S. Department of Labor. The CPI is a widely tracked inflation barometer that measures the costs for goods and services.

Specifically, the economists noted that there was an unusually large reliance on less precise estimates of price changes in consumer goods and services. The Journal reported that BLS shared excerpts with the economists from an internal report that blamed the reporting changes on staffing shortages among data collectors who canvass businesses across the country.

Beginning in April, “the CPI temporarily reduced the number of outlets and quotes it attempted to collect due to a staffing shortage in certain CPI cities,” the BLS email reviewed by the Journal stated. “These procedures will be kept in place until the hiring freeze is lifted, and additional staff can be hired and trained.”

The April CPI report showed that seasonally adjusted prices rose 2.3% over the previous 12 months. It was released on May 13, roughly a week after the latest FOMC monetary policy meeting concluded, so the Fed did not include that data set in its interest rate calculus.

It is unclear, however, how the CPI staffing revelation will impact the Fed’s decision-making process at its next meeting scheduled for June 17-18. It is also unclear how significant the staffing shortage impacts will be on the May CPI report, which is set for release on June 11.

Neither the Federal Reserve nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics immediately responded to Scotsman Guide’s requests for comment.

While the Fed considers CPI data when determining interest rate policy, it leans more heavily on the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index published by the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The latest PCE report, released May 30, showed that the prices of goods and services purchased by U.S. consumers rose 2.1% in April compared to a year ago.

In explaining its preference for the PCE index, the Fed’s website states that it is “constructed in a way that accounts for how Americans are spending their money at a given time and more quickly adapts to changes in spending patterns.” However, it also notes that “the Fed closely tracks other inflation measures as well, including the consumer price indexes and producer price indexes issued by the Department of Labor.”

Should that Labor Department data become less reliable moving forward, the Fed may have fewer tools at its disposal to accurately gauge inflation.