Producer prices rose 6.5% year on year in October in the United States, their fastest pace in nearly four years.
The producer price index (PPI) accelerated further last month, reaching its highest level since the end of 2022, according to official data released on Friday.
This acceleration matters because these are the prices at which businesses sell their products or services, for example to the government, to consumers or to other businesses.
These figures make it possible to gauge pressures on production costs, which are often passed through into store prices.
Month on month, the PPI rose 0.3% in October, after a revised +1.4% in September, according to Reuters. The monthly increase remains below the Reuters consensus, set at +0.4%.
Goods prices rose 0.5% over the month, driven mainly by food and basic organic chemicals, again according to Reuters. Services increased by 0.2%.
Excluding volatile energy and food prices, the increase, by contrast, slowed slightly, to 4.9% year on year, compared with 5% in September.
The headline index and the measure excluding energy and food therefore diverge: the overall annual pace is accelerating, while the underlying increase gives up one-tenth of a point.
On Tuesday, the release of the consumer price index (CPI), one of the benchmark gauges of U.S. inflation, had surprised in the wrong direction.
That index showed that, while pump prices had stopped surging, other spending categories were rising quickly, such as grocery bills.
Taken together, the two indexes signal price pressures that are not limited to fuels and that continue to be passed along the chain, from business costs to store shelves.