@dictatordave @jmw150 @IAMAL_PHARIUS It is true that the BLS did make some significant changes to how they are collecting and reporting prices in various regions, especially smaller cities. They did almost entirely eliminate staff at regional departments that would literally go from store to store collecting sticker prices and going door to door asking about rent prices. That can certainly affection regional inflation tracking like the twitter post says.

On the otherhand, the BLS started buying cash register data from Nielsen years ago. They get car sales prices from JD Power. These aren't sticker prices, but the actual final prices paid by people since the sticker price tracking never took into account discounts or deals. They get rent data based on census surveys. They do significant web scraping for prices. The shift could simply just be officially switching to these collection methods versus the more archaic (and expensive) methods they used before.