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Inflation (Finance)

Information about economic inflation.

What is the Producer Price Index (PPI)?

The Producer Price Index (PPI) program measures the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output. The prices included in the PPI are from the first commercial transaction for many products and some services.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Latest PPI News Releases. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/pPI/.

 

How does the Producer Price Index differ from the Consumer Price Index?

While both the PPI and CPI measure price change over time for a fixed set of goods and services, the CPI and PPI differ for three main reasons:

  1. the composition of the set of goods and services,
  2. the types of prices collected for the included goods and services, and
  3. coverage of the services sector.

The target set of goods and services included in the PPI is the entire marketed output of U.S. producers. This includes goods, services, and construction products purchased by other producers as inputs to their operations or as capital investment, goods and services purchased by consumers either directly from the service producer or indirectly from a retailer, and products sold as export and to government.

The target set of items included in the CPI is the set of goods and services purchased for consumption purposes by urban U.S. households.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021, June 23). Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/ppi/faqs/questions-and-answers.htm#4.

Producer Price Index Data

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the Department of Commerce has an overview of the Producer Price Index (PPI) here.

The main page with tools to find historical CPI data. is here:

https://www.bls.gov/ppi/databases/data.htm

There are two data series:

  • Industry Data
  • Commodity Data including "headline" FD-ID indexes

For each of the indexes, you can choose a view: Top Picks, Data Finder,    One Screen, Multi-Screen, Tables, Text Files. Top picks lets you choose from the various series. One screen data lets you choose by industry and product. Multi Screen allows similar choices; Tables includes the press releases; Text Files lets you download raw, unformatted data. The page also lists "Discontinued Data Series" allows you to retrieve series of CPI numbers which are no longer updated. 

There are help pages and FAQs at the bottom of the pages.