Producer Price Indexes

Current news release

• Producer Price Index

Historical time series available via gopher

• PC - Producer Price Index Revision - Current Series
• PD - Producer Price Index Revision - Discontinued Series
• WP - Producer Price Index

Data available

• Price indexes for net output for virtually all industries in the mining and manufacturing sectors, including price indexes for approximately 3,200 individual products.
• Annual average indexes for all groupings and items.
• Regional indexes for electric power, bituminous coal, and a few others.

Coverage

• Goods-producing sectors: Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, scrap, and manufacturing industries in the United States.
• Recent expansion into the services sector (e.g., transportation, broadcasting, car and truck rental, hospitals).

Source of data

• Sample of about 3,200 items; 80,000 price quotations at first commercial transaction; mail survey to producing establishments.
• Weighted by value-of-shipments data based on the 1987 economic censuses.
• Industries and products are systematically resampled as needed.

Reference period

• Monthly, Tuesday of the week containing the 13th of each month for most items.

Forms of publication

• Monthly news releaseùProducer Price Indexesùusually in second full week of month after reference month. Electronic access available.
• Monthly periodicalùProducer Price Indexesùin the middle of the second month after reference month. Also selected grouping indexes in Monthly Labor Review.
• Data files on tape.
• Diskettes.
• Historical data in Handbook of Labor Statistics.

Uses

• Indicator of inflationary trends in economy.
• Measure of price movements for particular industries and products. (Measures price change, not level of prices.)
• Escalation in long-term contracts.
• Inventory valuation measure (LIFO) for some organizations.
• Market research.
• Comparison with other industry-oriented economic time series.
• Deflation of nominal dollar values spanning several years.

BLS Home Page