TrueCOLA Project

• Monthly Margin Report: The Consumer Price Index basket priced in dollars and set against income for seven household types, published the next business day after each CPI release.
• District pages: A page for each of the 435 congressional districts and every state, updated with each report.
• AI Companion: Each report as one text file any AI assistant can read, a free download next to the PDF.
• Open data: The published figures as free, downloadable public files.

Inflation is generally reported as a percentage. Household bills arrive in dollars. Official sources describe prices, income, housing, taxes, and healthcare in detail, but none publishes a single recurring answer to one question: after the required costs are paid, what is left?

TrueCOLA brings those source measures together on common terms. The Monthly Margin Report publishes the next business day after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Consumer Price Index. A Friday CPI release means a Monday report. A release on the day before a federal holiday means the report publishes the next business day after the holiday. It is the Consumer Price Index basket, priced in dollars and set against income. It does not replace the index. It shows what the index weighs, in the unit bills arrive in.

The research engine and the public website have separate functions. The engine retrieves documented source data, applies version-controlled Python functions, and subjects the result to automated checks. The website displays the published figures. It does not calculate them.

Federal sources provide the foundation. Where no federal source offers current rent data at the level of detail required, the report identifies the Zillow rent input plainly and preserves its source conditions. The methodology documents the rules, and the method changes and corrections log keeps every change on the public record.

TrueCOLA publishes all household margin analyses under a versioned production methodology, and every methodology update or data revision is documented publicly in the Method Changes and Corrections Log.

We do not lobby, endorse, or advocate. We measure, and we publish. TrueCOLA does not recommend what wages, benefits, or cost-of-living adjustments should be. It does not forecast votes or tell anyone how to vote.

The same measures are published for every district, on the same schedule, by the same method. Readers, reporters, employers, public officials, and voters draw their own conclusions about what the figures mean.