What if they're from Alabama?

A hobby/thing you do to make extra cash on the side

It's been changed 7 times since 78

Most recently these were the changes, very well documented. Nothing sounds suspicious

Changes to the CPI establishment frame (2019-2020) Replaced Telephone Point-of-Purchase Survey (TPOPS) as source of retail establishment frame with data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Eliminated redundancies and inefficiencies in survey operations and reduced household burden Use of Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages business registry to refine the location and address data from the CE For more on the history of the CPI and price change in the U.S see

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/historical-changes.htm