Producer Price Index Rockets to 9.7% Annual Increase - Near Highest On Record

Producer Price Index Near Highest On Record - NASDAQ

Fresh from a near record 7.5% Consumer Price Index announcement earlier this week, the Producer Price Index, which recognizes the cost of goods in production, rose 9.7% year over year in January 2022.

Often a leading indicator of the price inflation that will be felt by the broader consumer market in later months, the January 2022 number was among the highest on record (the highest was in November 2021 at 9.8%).

Looking at the core produce price inflation number (which removes energy, food, and other more volatile figures) the figure of 8.3% was substantially higher than the rolling 3 month average of 6.9% which itself is among the highest ever measured for a similar period.

In case we were starting to believe that inflation had already peaked and is now on the wane, this morning’s PPI and last week’s CPI figures slap us back to reality a bit. Not that we may not be peaking this very instant — it’s possible — but until the data shows us coming down the parabolic curve, this is nothing to assume. Inflation is real, it’s persistent and it is large. Odds of a 50-basis-point hike at the March Fed meeting now looks more and more like a done deal. - Mark Vickery, Zacks Quoted on NASDAQ

We will continue to provide timely analysis on the Producer Price Index in the days to come…