This is a marketplace special. The Real Costs. I'm Kai Rizdal. These are interesting times in this economy.

The basics, you know, inflation's still happening. The job market is weakening. Tariffs and uncertainty lather rinse repeat.

But the news of the day, because there are things every day, it doesn't

quite capture the real costs of what's happening out there. We are going to begin with and talk a lot

today about the way we measure this economy and the costs that come if we can't rely on some of

the key indicators. Those of us in the economic journalism world are far from the only ones glued to our screens when these reports come out, you know, and we all use it in different ways.

So to start us off, we've called Nicole's survey. She's an economist at Wells Fargo.

And we're going to talk to her about the data point of choice that she uses at the moment, the consumer price index and how it fits into her day to day.

Nicole, it's good to have you on.

Thanks for having me.

Let's go back to Tuesday morning and you get out of bed at whatever time you get out of bed.

Is your first thought, ooh, CPI comes out today?

Yes.

Not coffee, tea.

I have to walk the dog, but CPI?

It's, CPI comes out today, therefore I should probably get a coffee on the way to work.

And what are you, as you approach getting this data, right, 8.30 in the morning,

Washington time, 5.30 for those of us on the West Coast. What's your thought process going in?

So going in, so in my role as an economist, going in, I make sure that I know what my expectations are.

And then when the data actually hits at 830, first thing I'm doing is Googling like everyone else, BLS, CPI, pulling up this.

You don't have a bookmarked?

I don't actually.

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