I think you say “as good as they can get with [the] hard manual work that goes into compiling them” as a way to respect the challenge of the BLS and say they’re doing the best with their resources, but it’s worth pointing out they could be better with more resources.
DOGE hurt them pretty hard: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductio...