Wholesale prices shot up 11.3 percent for the year ended in June according to the producer price data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS Producer Price Indexes home page is posted here. The BLS press release on today’s data is posted here. The BLS press release usefully breaks down the sources of the increase.
On a monthly basis the index rose 1.1 percent in June. CNBC’s Jeff Cox covers the data here. Cox notes of the 11.3 percent annual gain, “almost 90% came from a 10% increase in final demand energy costs as prices for oil, natural gas and other products soared during the month.”
The stories I have read do not address the seeming preview that producer prices hold for consumer prices. It seems to me that yesterday’s CPI data understate the dynamics of the inflationary forces working their way through our economy and for which the Biden administration has nothing but weak talking points.
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