One question, two statistical agencies: Canadian and US inflation side by side

Most analysis stops at the edge of your own file. The interesting questions usually sit just past it: is our growth real after inflation, is our hiring keeping up with the market, is this a Canadian story or a North American one. Answering them means finding an official series, downloading it, cleaning it and lining it up with something else.

Datastam has that step built in. The Official statistics catalog holds series from 29 statistical agencies and central banks, ready to analyze without leaving your workspace. Here is one worked example, start to finish, with the real numbers.

The question

"How has Canadian inflation compared to the US since 2020?"

That takes two series from two agencies in two countries: Statistics Canada's all-items consumer price index and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI for all urban consumers. Both are in the catalog. Searching "consumer price index" finds them, and each result shows the publishing agency, the unit, the frequency and whether the series has passed verification against the live source.

What the data says

Both countries peaked in the same month. Inflation topped out in June 2022 at 8.1% in Canada and 9.1% in the United States.

Canada ran cooler almost the whole way. In 73 of the 79 months where both agencies published a figure, the Canadian rate printed below the American one. Canada was higher in only four months, three of them in the summer of 2023.

The widest gap was 2.4 points. In January 2022, US inflation was 7.5% against 5.1% in Canada.

It adds up. From January 2020 to August 2026, consumer prices rose 24.1% in Canada and 29.9% in the United States.

The latest reading is closer. In August 2026 the rates were 3.0% in Canada and 3.4% in the US.

The same two agencies, a second question

Once two sources are in the same workspace, the next question is cheap. Unemployment, from Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey and the BLS Current Population Survey:

Unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted. October 2025 was not published in the United States. Sources: Statistics Canada, Table 14-10-0287-01 (v2062815); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, series LNS14000000. Retrieved October 5, 2026.

The pandemic spike was almost identical: 14.8% in the US in April 2020 and 14.2% in Canada a month later, on the current revised series. The recoveries were not. By August 2026 the US rate was 4.1% and Canada's was 6.4%. The two surveys define unemployment somewhat differently, so the direction of each line tells you more than the gap between the levels.

The gap is the point

Look at October 2025 on either chart. The US line breaks. That month was never published: the BLS marks it "data unavailable due to the 2025 lapse in appropriations."

A missing official number is a place where a tool can quietly invent one. Here it arrives as an empty month with a "missing" status, and the chart shows a gap. We did not fill it in.

We also checked the plumbing. For all four series we compared the values served through the catalog with the agencies' own data services, month by month. Across 409 values there was not a single difference.

How to do this yourself

1. Open Official statistics. Browsing and searching need no account.
2. Search for an indicator such as "consumer price index", or pick an agency under "Browse by source".
3. Click "Start Analyzing" on a series. It opens in a new conversation with an automatic overview: trends, distribution, outliers. You will be asked to sign in at this point.
4. To add the second series, use the attach menu in the chat and choose "Official statistics". Search again and click "Add".
5. Ask the question in plain English. The charts, the Python that produced them and the source citations stay with the answer.

If you would rather skip the import, type the question into "Ask the data a question" at the top of the page and get a computed answer with citations.

Now put your own numbers next to it

This is where it earns its place. Upload your revenue by month and add the consumer price index to see growth after inflation. Put your regional headcount beside the provincial unemployment rate. Compare your export mix with official trade figures. The official series is one click away from the file you already have, and every chart it appears in names the agency that published it.

What is in the catalog

As of October 5, 2026, the catalog serves 3,755 series in 298 datasets from 29 sources. Statistics Canada is the deepest at 2,546 series, followed by the World Bank, the European Central Bank, Statistics Poland and Eurostat. The United States is covered through the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, FRED, the Treasury and others.

Three things to know before you rely on it:

• It is a curated subset. Each agency publishes far more than is served here. The page shows the count per source.
• An import is a snapshot. If the agency revises a series, import it again to pick up the change.
• Attribution travels with the data. The agency's licence and citation are saved with every import, and series whose licence does not allow redistribution cannot be imported.

The catalog is provided through Starwell, an independent data provider that checks the series it serves against the publishing agency. Datastam is not affiliated with or endorsed by the agencies themselves.

Sources

• Statistics Canada, Table 18-10-0004-01, Consumer Price Index, monthly, not seasonally adjusted, and Table 14-10-0287-01, Labour force characteristics, monthly, seasonally adjusted. Data to August 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers, series CUUR0000SA0, and Unemployment rate, series LNS14000000. Data to August 2026; October 2025 not published.
• Series pages in the catalog: Canada CPI, US CPI, Canada unemployment, US unemployment.
• Year-over-year rates are computed from the published index levels and rounded to one decimal.