March 18, 2011 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Producer prices in February 2011
In February, the Producer Price Index for finished goods increased 1.6 percent, seasonally adjusted. This rise followed advances of 0.8 percent in January and 0.9 percent in December, and marks the largest increase in finished goods prices since a 1.9-percent advance in June 2009.
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Prices for finished energy goods climbed 3.3 percent in February, the fifth straight monthly increase. Accounting for over forty percent of the February advance, prices for gasoline rose 3.7 percent. Also contributing to higher prices for finished energy goods were increases in the indexes for home heating oil and residential electric power.
The index for finished consumer foods surged 3.9 percent in February, the largest increase since a 4.2-percent climb in November 1974. About seventy percent of the February rise can be traced to higher prices for fresh and dry vegetables, which jumped 48.7 percent.
In February, prices for finished goods less foods and energy moved up 0.2 percent, the third consecutive rise. Accounting for about twenty percent of the February increase was the index for passenger cars, which advanced 0.6 percent.
These data are from the BLS Producer Price Index program. To learn more, see "Producer Price Indexes — February 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-0349. All producer price indexes are routinely subject to revision once, 4 months after publication, to reflect the availability of late reports and corrections by respondents.
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