May 2026 CPI: 4.2% — who called it

The May 2026 CPI print landed at 4.2% year over year. Closest call on the headline: Street consensus. The benchmarks below were on the record before the release; the Nowflation Model row is its vintage-true walk-forward backtest, computed later from the data as published before the release, not a call on the record. Each is graded against the BLS first print; signed error = forecast minus actual, so a positive number ran hot. These are the values frozen at grading time — later revisions by any source never touch them.

Headline CPI YoY: actual 4.2%

Forecaster	Call	Signed error
Cleveland Fed nowcast	4.18%	-0.020pp
Street consensus (closest)	4.20%	0.000pp

Core CPI YoY: actual 2.9%

Forecaster	Call	Signed error
Cleveland Fed nowcast	2.82%	-0.077pp
Street consensus (closest)	2.90%	0.000pp

Headline CPI MoM: actual 0.5%

Forecaster	Call	Signed error
Cleveland Fed nowcast	0.46%	-0.041pp
Street consensus (closest)	0.50%	0.000pp

Core CPI MoM: actual 0.2%

Forecaster	Call	Signed error
Cleveland Fed nowcast (closest)	0.23%	+0.026pp
Street consensus	0.30%	+0.100pp

The league table — headline CPI YoY, every graded print

Forecaster	Live prints	Live MAE	Backtest prints	Backtest MAE	Combined MAE
Street Consensus	45	0.087pp	—	—	0.087pp (45)
Cleveland Fed	45	0.104pp	—	—	0.104pp (45)
Kalshi Market	4	0.112pp	—	—	0.112pp (4)
Nowflation Forecast	3	0.212pp	—	—	0.212pp (3)
Nowflation Model	3	0.312pp	41	0.095pp	0.11pp (44)

Live = for the Nowflation rows, the months whose receipt was locked before the release, graded on the receipt; for the benchmarks, every print they were graded on. Ranked by live MAE. Backtest = the Nowflation Model's vintage-true walk-forward before its first live print (June 2026). Lower MAE = closer calls.

May 2026 CPI print day, the print-day page for this month · Full scoreboard · CPI forecast · Methodology · Dashboard