While we do not have an official announcement from DRS, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics made public the CPI that affects our raise in April. The raise will be 4.483%.

Many thanks to Bill Cantor for staying on top of this issue as well as all the other numbers.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change in prices over time of goods and services purchased by households.  This article gives a very general overview.  Much more data can be found on the BLS site.

The LEOFF 1 pension is adjusted each April based on the CPI for the preceeding year.  The actual index is the CPI-W, Seattle-Tacoma.

The change between 2007 and 2007 is 4.483%.  This article explains how to check and calculate the COLA figures.

We have adapted it from instructions written by Bill Cantor and added some graphics to make the process clear.

The December figures are out for the LEOFF 1 Trust Fund -- $4,815,297,700.  That is down significantly from earlier in the year.  For example the figure for January 2008 was $6,271,488,352.