I'm in the general public. Basically anyone not in finance or economics I'd consider to be the general public. It's still important to know the trend to know how and where to invest your resource.
If you're utilizing the inflation figure, are you really the average Joe, and if you are utilizing that information are you really going to stop with the headline figure? Inflation is more nuanced than is captured in a single variable.
It's prob the reason the average Joe doesn't look at inflation - because its presented in the worst way possible.
I'm not trying to be the best investor or anything like that - but knowing the basic inflation trend I think would be useful to a large % of the population.