WWC snapshot of http://stats.bls.gov/prodpric.htm taken on Sat Jun 10 19:48:39 1995
Producer Price Indexes
This program provides measures of changes in prices received by domestic producers at the level of the first commercial transaction for many products and some services.
Current news release
Historical time series available via gopher
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.