BLS September Quote Collection Rate Rises to 66.3% Before Fed Decision

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collected 66.3% of targeted September commodities and services price quotes, leaving the effect of missed observations unresolved before Bitcoin (BTC) faces Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision.

The BLS posted the figure Oct. 19. The quote collection rate rose from 65.9% in August but remained below the 67.6% recorded in September 2025. The agency reduced price collection in several areas during summer 2025 and resumed recruiting and training field staff that November.

The 66.3% figure measures responses among targeted quotes in an unweighted commodities and services survey. It does not mean that 33.7% of the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) was estimated. Housing is surveyed separately, and some prices used in the index come from other data sources.

That distinction matters when interpreting the September inflation reading. The quote collection rate alone cannot establish whether missed observations pushed CPI higher or lower, or the size of any effect.

“Though response rates can indicate the potential for bias in survey estimates, they do not indicate the presence of bias,” the BLS said.

A BLS study tested different treatments of missing responses using data from 2018 through 2023. It found small differences in the national all-items CPI under those treatments. Because the study period ended before the 2025 collection reductions, its findings do not determine the effect of those reductions on September’s reading.

Consumer prices rose 0.6% in September from August on a seasonally adjusted basis. Before seasonal adjustment, they were 3.7% higher than in September 2025, compared with a 3.4% annual increase in August. The collection figures provide no basis for adjusting those published rates upward or downward.

The Fed raised its target interest rate range to 3.75%–4% on Sept. 16. It is scheduled to announce its next policy decision at 2 p.m. ET (18:00 UTC) Wednesday, Oct. 28.