Proposed Information Collection Request Submitted for Public Comment and Recommendations; Consumer Price Index Commodities and Services Survey

I. Background

Federal law requires BLS, under the direction of the Secretary of Labor, to collect, collate, and report full and complete statistics of the conditions of labor and the products and distribution of the products of the same. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is one of these statistics, and the collection of data from a wide spectrum of retail establishments and government agencies is essential for the timely and accurate calculation of the Commodities and Services component of the CPI. The CPI is the only index compiled by the U.S. Government that is designed to measure changes in the purchasing power of the urban consumer's dollar. The CPI is a measure of the average change in prices paid by urban consumers for a fixed market basket of goods and services. The CPI is used most widely as a measure of inflation, and serves as an indicator of the effectiveness of government economic policy. It is also used as a deflator of other economic series, that is, to adjust other series for price changes and to translate these series into inflation-free dollars. A third major use of the CPI is to adjust income payments. About 2.8 million workers are covered by collective bargaining contracts which provide for increases in wage rates based on increases in the CPI.

II. Current Actions

The continuation of the collection of prices for the CPI is essential since the CPI is the nation's chief source of information on retail price changes. If the information on prices of commodities and services were not collected, Federal fiscal and monetary polices would be hampered due to the lack of information on price changes in a major sector of the U.S. economy, and estimates of the real value of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could not be made. The consequences for both the Federal and private sectors would be far-reaching and would have serious repercussions of Federal government policy and institutions. The transient increase in the number of respondents is due to recurrent replacement in item and geographic sampling. With the 1998 CPI revision, substantial changes are being made to the CPI item classification structure. New pricing areas will be sampled to support this new item structure and the overlapping geographic areas will have new samples drawn wherever it is necessary in order to support this new structure. Currently, data for the CPI are collected by CPI field staff in assigned retail outlets. The field staff record the data on schedules and mail the data to Washington, D.C. for processing. A key element in the 1998 CPI revision is the conversion of all data collection and transmission to electronic systems. A fully-implemented Computer- Assisted Data Collection (CADC) system for the CPI will result in significant advantages by increasing productivity and improving the overall quality of the CPI. Electronic data collection and transmission will provide long-term savings through a major reduction of mail, paper, and printing costs. Electronic systems will provide the opportunity to reduce data capture, survey logistics management, and review staffs. Type of Review: Revision. Agency: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Title: Consumer Price Index Commodities and Services Survey. OMB Number: 1220-0039. Frequency: Semi-annually. Affected Public: Business or other for-profit; Not-for-profit institutions; State, Local or Tribal Government. Number of Respondents: 52,104. Estimated Time Per Response: 16 minutes. Total Burden Hours: 91,487 hours. Comments submitted in response to this notice will be summarized and/or included in the request for Office of Management and Budget approval of the ICR; they also will become a matter of public record.

Signed at Washington, DC, this 16th day of January, 1996. Peter T. Spolarich, Chief, Division of Management Systems, Bureau of Labor Statistics. [FR Doc. 96-578 Filed 1-8-96; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4510-24-M