 The consumer price index, the CPI is down nearly 3% from this past summer's peak, but the consumer price index, again that main gauge of inflation, does not account for all of America. That's because it only measures the average prices that urban consumers pay for a basket of basic products. Rural Americans are left out from that data, and that's not a small number of people. 14% of Americans live in rural areas, that's 46 million people, and they're kind of left out of this calculation. So some economists say that rural America is being totally left out of the equation, even though people living there are likely to suffer more from rising prices. Joining us now for a closer look at how inflation is impacting rural America is an economist, Melissa Armo. Thank you for joining us, and my first question is why? Why would you leave 46 million people out of a pretty basic calculation of how life is going? I don't know why they're doing that, because again, it's a lot of people, and we have more and more people that have moved to rural America since COVID. So it's about 14% of the population. I think everyone should be counted quite frankly. I think this adjustment was made a very long time ago, and they've never changed it. But when you look at rural Americans and even look at people that live in large cities, everyone right now is being affected by, are affected by inflation. And I think the problem is that people that live in rural communities, it costs them more in gas to get to the grocery store. It takes them longer to get there. It costs them more to heat their homes and cool their homes. And so I think it really has affected people living in rural America a lot more than the average person. Yeah. If your grocery store is an hour away and gas is $4 a gallon, where does that leave you every time you need basic goods? Is that where rural folks in America are struggling the most, is with fuel and grocery prices, or where are rural Americans being impacted by inflation? I guess I should ask. But really it is gas prices. Gas prices, really, how do people get to work? And when you think about it, you're driving not just to get groceries, to get to work, to get everywhere. If you live an hour or in some of these cases, some people live two hours away from their jobs, it can take a long time. And then of course you add that onto the cost of your gas back and forth to work and home every day. It really can impact people. I think the cost of diesel fuel and gasoline that has gone up in the last two years really, not just this year, but even going back from 2021 has affected people. And even though the cost of gas has gone down, I'd say the last since last summer, it's still way higher than it was two years ago. And the problem with the number that we just got yesterday is that we're seeing it tick up. So it doesn't seem to be a lot much relief for people. So people keep saying, this is going to end. This is going to end. And you know, and it's not ending. And I think people need to budget accordingly. And, you know, with the way things are right now, people can work from home. So people live far away from the city. And it takes them a while to get there. They may want to think about taking out at work from home job. Sure. That's Melissa Armos. She's an economist. Again, 14 million people just basically don't count when it comes to measuring inflation, 14 percent, 46 million. Sorry about that. All right. Thank you. Coming up, we're celebrating.