Wholesale prices in the United States rose by a larger-than-expected 2.6% last month from a year earlier, the Associated Press reports, a sign that some inflation pressures remain high. The increase, the sharpest year-over-year increase since March 2023, comes at a time when other price indicators are showing that inflation has continued to ease.
The Labor Department said today that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it reaches consumers — rose 0.2% from May to June after being unchanged the month before. Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to bounce around from month to month, so-called “core” wholesale prices were up 0.4% from May and 3% from June 2023.
The producer price index can provide an early sign of where consumer inflation is headed. Economists also watch it because some of its components, notably health care and financial services, flow into the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index.
