April 15, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Producer prices up in March

The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods advanced 1.0 percent in March, seasonally adjusted. This increase followed a 0.2-percent increase in February and a 0.1-percent rise in January.

[Chart data—TXT]

March's acceleration in the finished goods index was primarily due to prices for finished energy goods, which advanced 5.5 percent compared with a 0.4-percent gain in February. Excluding energy goods, the index for finished goods rose 0.2 percent in March. Prices for finished goods other than foods and energy edged up 0.1 percent, after being unchanged in the prior month.

During the first quarter of 2002, the Finished Goods Price Index advanced at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.6 percent, after posting a 9.6-percent decline during the fourth quarter of 2001. The index for finished energy goods rose at a 26.3-percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2002, after dropping 43.4 percent in the last three months of 2001.

From March 2001 to March 2002, the finished goods index fell 1.4 percent.

These data are a product of the BLS Producer Price Index program. Find out more in the "Producer Price Indexes, March 2002", news release USDL 02-212. All producer price indexes are routinely subject to revision once, 4 months after original publication, to reflect the availability of late reports and corrections by respondents.