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July, 2001, Vol. 124, No. 7

Producer prices in 2000: energy goods continue to climb

William F. Snyders

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for Finished Goods advanced 3.6 percent in 2000, the largest annual gain since 1990. Excluding energy goods, the index for finished goods rose 1.5 percent. The PPI for finished consumer foods was up 1.7 percent in 2000. The index for producer prices for finished goods excluding foods and energy advanced 1.3 percent in 2000, following a 0.9-percent increase in 1999. This index includes both consumer goods and capital equipment.

Price movements for intermediate goods and crude goods followed a pattern similar to that of finished goods. The index for intermediate goods rose 4.1 percent in 2000, following a 3.7-percent gain in 1999. (Intermediate items in the PPI reflect changing prices for material inputs to the manufacturing process, as well as various supplies consumed in the production process.) The crude goods index advanced 35.5 percent, after rising 15.3 percent in the previous year. (Generally, crude goods are unprocessed goods that are outputs from mining industries and agricultural production.) (See chart 1.)

For energy goods at the crude stage of processing, higher inflation was observed in 2000 compared with 1999. However, price increases slowed for both intermediate and finished energy goods, while price advances for crude petroleum and petroleum-based products decelerated from 1999 to 2000.

This excerpt is from an article published in the July 2001 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

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