Core wholesale prices, not seasonally adjusted, rose 4.89% yoy in May 2026, a sideways move from 4.85% the previous month which however was initially reported at 5.2%

 

 Wholesale prices rose 1.1% in May, more than expected, on surge in energy

The producer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in May, putting the 12-month wholesale inflation rate at 6.5%, the highest since November 2022.

Excluding food and energy, the so-called core PPI accelerated 0.4%, compared with the consensus view of 0.5%, indicating that rising fuel prices are causing much of the inflationary burden.  

Wholesale prices are frequently revised significantly from month to month but that is seldom followed-up.

According to this report, core wholesale prices increased last month at a somewhat less fearsome rate, and this month is about the same as that revision.

Should I get excited when it's not 5.2% when it's still pretty awful?

I still expect increases in energy costs to act as a screen for producers to increase prices more than warranted in order to realize higher profits. 

My latest lube, oil, and filter cost me $83, $30 of which was labor. The specific oil used retails for $7.99/quart. My discount was $0.24/quart lol.

But in 2021 the very same oil retailed for $3.99/quart. 

 

core nsa

total index nsa

 

CNBC doesn't really want to talk about how bad April's increase in wholesale prices was, doesn't mention the year over year increase to core, stripping out food and energy, at 5.2%

 Wholesale inflation jumps 6% in April on annual basis, biggest increase since 2022

... The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.

On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

Excluding food and energy, the core PPI accelerated 1%, compared with the 0.4% estimate. ...

While much of the inflation move has been attributed to the war and President Donald Trump’s tariffs that were introduced a year ago, the PPI data shows the price pressures were broad-based. ...

I'll say.

Looks to me like producers giving us all the middle finger. 

I expect new record high corporate profits. 

 

 

CNBC wholesale prices headline spin zone: "rose much less than expected"; Ragin' inflation reality: "the biggest 12-month gain since February 2023"

And core wholesale inflation in 1Q2026 also rounds to 3.8% yoy, and is right back where we started with Trump in 1Q2025, if you give me 0.04 for 3.77% year over year.

 

Wholesale prices rose 0.5% in March, much less than expected despite war impact

The producer price index, a gauge of pipeline costs for final demand goods and services, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, well below the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 1.1%.

Excluding food and energy, core PPI was up just 0.1% against the forecast for 0.5%.

On an annual basis, the all-items PPI accelerated 4%, the biggest 12-month gain since February 2023. The core PPI posted a 3.8% annual gain. ...

All items

Core

CNBC now says inflation is a problem with February core wholesale prices up 3.9% year over year vs. 3.6% in January, Iran war effects pending

 Wholesale prices rose 0.7% in February, much more than expected

... On a 12-month basis, headline PPI inflation was at 3.4%, the most since February 2025, while core was at 3.9%, according to the BLS. The Federal Reserve targets inflation at 2%. ... 

None of the inflation data so far has captured the price increases associated with the war. But it has indicated that even before the attacks, inflation was a problem. A report last week indicated that consumer prices rose at a 2.4% rate in February. Separately, the Commerce Department said its main inflation gauge [pce], which the Fed uses as its forecasting tool, was at 3.1% for core and 2.8% for headline. ... 

Oh Gee, who could have predicted another hot inflation number?

 Core wholesale prices rose 0.8% in January, much more than expected

 

The not-seasonally-adjusted increase in Jan 2026 was 3.58% year over year and a whopping 1.037% on a monthly basis.

Wholesale prices climbed at an average rate of 3.3% in 2025 under Trump, higher than either 2023 or 2024 under Biden, with no let up in sight.

 

Core producer price inflation in 2025 under Trump was actually higher than under Biden in either 2024 or 2023

2025: 3.26%

2024: 2.86%

2023: 2.89%

Way to go, Brownie!

 

2025

2H2025

December 2025

You talkin' to me?

 

Core producer prices have been increasing year over year at 2.9+% for four straight months, but we're supposed to believe inflation is waning

 

Core producer prices, not seasonally adjusted, were up 2.827% year over year in today's report for August 2025

 The climb-down from last month's report for July 2025 at 3.655% year over year was YUGE.

The numbers have been quite volatile for the last four months. 

In today's release, the yoy numbers for Nov 2024 through Mar 2025 remain unchanged from last month's report. The five month average of these for the yoy increase in core wholesale prices has been 3.711%.

Last month the average for April through July came in lower, at 3.144% year over year, but that has now been revised even lower in this month's report, by 2%, to 3.081% yoy.

Combined with the fresh August reading at 2.827% yoy, clearly the trend for the rate increases has been lower overall.

But these levels are far higher than the average 1.629% which prevailed 2012-2020 inclusive. Our new lower August reading is a rate still nearly 74% higher than that.

The wholesale price environment remains highly inflationary compared with the pre-pandemic era.

 

 

 

Today's core wholesale price report breaks the nine-month-string of producer prices increasing year over year at 3% or more, but as always there will be revisions

 Here are the current June 2025 yoy figures for core producer price increases Dec-Jun, followed by the figures reported the previous month, followed by the figures as originally reported:

December 2024: 3.74%, 3.74%, 3.5%

January 2025: 3.92, 3.92, 3.6

February 2025: 3.73, 3.74, 3.4

March 2025: 3.86, 3.91, 3.3

April 2025: 3.13, 3.18, 3.1

May 2025: 3.20, 3.02 (revised up as predicted)

June 2025: 2.60.

 

The optimism of the original figures has been removed by the revisions to Dec-Mar available only but lately.

 

December and January revisions alone still hold fast today, but not thereafter.

 

As always it is important not to press the monthly results too strongly, but the May revised uptick is consistent with a down-up, down-up, down-up pattern which is obviously trending down.

 

Viewed on a semiannual basis, however, we are Wei Tu Hai, and trending Wong Wei Charlie.

 

 

 

 

It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.

 

 

  

 

What they lack in intelligence they make up for in bad manners

 

Trump calls Fed chief Powell ‘numbskull’ as he urges interest rate cut

 

... Trump claimed at the White House that lowering rates by 2 percentage points would save the U.S. $600 billion per year, “but we can’t get this guy to do it.” “We’re going to spend $600 billion a year, $600 billion because of one numbskull that sits here [and says] ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates now,’” Trump said. ...

Trump’s insult came hours after the Labor Department reported that U.S. producer prices rose less in May than some economists anticipated. ...

 

‘Immaturity’: Rand Paul rips White House after being ‘uninvited’ from picnic 

 

... “I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the picnic; I think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul told reporters. “The White House is owned by the taxpayers, we are all members of it, every Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.” ... 

 

Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction

Which means that this headline is what then?

Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:

A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...

“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”

Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.

Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.

As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.

 

Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.

Overall producer prices are up  0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, speaking of wholesale prices, you are paying $9+ a dozen for eggs in some places because producer prices averaged $4.62 in December

 That would be 75-cents for an egg that cost the producer about 19-cents.

I got a $1 off 18 eggs yesterday at a nearby health food store and paid $6.99, 39-cents each.

Why eggs are selling for over $9 a dozen in some places—and when prices are expected to drop

The biggest factor pushing up egg prices is a wave of avian flu, which began in early 2022 and led to the culling of millions of egg-laying hens. With demand remaining steady, the reduced supply has caused prices to rise.

This is the second time egg prices have surged since 2022, following a previous wave of avian flu that wiped out large numbers of egg-laying hens and caused supply shortages that year. Avian flu has wiped out over 100 million chickens since a major outbreak began in early 2022.

 

You would think chicken prices would go up, too, but I consistently get chicken thighs in bulk at Sam's for $1.38/lb, and have done so right through the pandemic.

And the rotisserie chicken remains $4.98, too.

We'll get December consumer prices tomorrow. Here's November's chart for eggs:

 

 

Ignore the expectations game, wholesale prices were up year over year 3.3% overall, and core prices up 3.5%

 Three consecutive months of increases measured year over year for overall producer prices, FIVE for core.

But the stock market cheerleaders always play it this way:

Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.

Yeah, only half of the people we expected to be destroyed were. Good news!

The charts:

 

More inflation: Core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, have been up four months in a row measured year over year, the last three increases all above 3% yoy

 3.2%, 3.4% . . . and 3.5% year over year now in November 2024.

Overall prices are up 3% yoy in November.

 

Wholesale prices rose 0.4% in November, more than expected:

Final-demand goods prices leaped 0.7% on the month, the biggest move since February of this year. Some 80% of the move came from a 3.1% surge in food prices, according to the BLS.

Within the food category, chicken eggs soared 54.6%, joining an across-the-board acceleration in items such as dry vegetables, fresh fruits and poultry. Egg prices at the retail level swelled 8.2% on the month and were up 37.5% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate report Wednesday on consumer prices.

 

The Fed is expected still to cut again at the next meeting despite all the evidence pointing to persistently high and increasing inflation, hiding behind the skirts of fear of job losses, a smokescreen for gifting easier money to speculators, and to federal authorities who now need to finance $36.1 trillion in the national debt at lower rates.

20Y and 30Y bonds are revolting, demanding 4.624 and 4.551 as we speak, now the highest yields across the curve, as the short end yields in US Treasury bills come back down to earth.

 

Core producer prices, aka wholesale prices, were up 2.4% year over year in July 2024, overall prices up 2.2%

The little guy at the end of the chain is still getting screwed, just less hard than before.

Reported yesterday:

LOL, the record used goes back only to 2009

 Producer prices rise 11.2%; Biggest gain on record...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPIFID

The oldest measure goes back to 1913:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPIACO .

The percent change from a year ago is really bad, as in 1974 bad, but hardly the "biggest gain on record", as you can plainly see.

 

 

 

Warped New York Times views inflation as sign of increased demand

Nelson D. Schwartz, here:

Besides the increase in consumer prices reported on Thursday, data Wednesday on producer prices showed a rise of 0.6 percent last month, the largest increase since September 2012 and an indication that demand for a number of basic goods is growing faster than economists expected.

Never mind industrial production fell 0.6% (expectation was 0.0%) along with capacity utilization, which dropped to 78.6% (expectation was 79.2%). Import prices were down 0.4% (expectation was for an increase of 0.3%). Retail sales also disappointed up just 0.1% vs. expectation of 0.4%. The expectation ex-autos was even higher up 0.6%, and the disappointment even lower with a flat 0.0%. Crude oil supplies were up .947M when they were expected to be down .400M. The housing index came in lower at 45 vs. expectation of 49.

Against this backdrop of soft demand, higher producer and consumer prices along with back to back months of flat wages are indicative of nothing so much as . . .

PAIN.

Which is what, evidently, The New York Times enjoys inflicting the most. 

Food prices are up 9.52% in the last four years, average hourly earnings just 8.28%

And it's gotten worse in March as reported here:

U.S. producer prices recorded their largest increase in nine months in March as the cost of food and services rose, pointing to some pockets of inflation at the factory gate. ... Food prices jumped 1.1 percent, the largest increase since May, after rising 0.6 percent in February. ... Food prices have now risen for a third straight month, in part reflecting a drought in the West.

On top of that, average hourly earnings dropped a penny.

Irrational Exuberance In Producer Prices Coincided With Housing Bubble

Once producer prices hit the 122 level on the index in 1999, they really didn't look back for nine years, reaching a peak of 205 in 2008, a rise of 68 percent, pretty much tracking the housing bubble.

The dramatic reflation of the PPI since the recent nadir around 169 in 2009 has not been accompanied by a reflation of housing prices, try as the Fed may.

"With the exception of a few thoughtful men, the whole nation again sang paeans." -- Andrew White, Inflation in France (quoted here)