A small decline in one producer-price category offered little basis for declaring household relief. On November 15, 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that October final-demand producer prices rose 0.2 percent after seasonal adjustment and 8.0 percent over twelve months before adjustment. Goods prices rose 0.6 percent that month; services prices fell 0.1 percent. [ppi2022]
The services decline included falling trade margins. BLS reported that margins received by wholesalers and retailers fell 0.5 percent, while transportation and warehousing service prices fell 0.2 percent. Other final-demand services, excluding trade, transportation and warehousing, rose 0.2 percent. Even within that producer report, the direction was not uniform. [ppi2022]
The consumer release, issued November 10, put October’s CPI-U increase at 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted and 7.7 percent over twelve months before adjustment. Food prices were 10.9 percent above a year earlier. Shelter accounted for more than half of the monthly increase in the overall consumer index. [cpi2022]
For readers concerned about household strain, the distinction is substantive: the producer release’s trade margins are not the consumer release’s food prices. Our interpretation is that a favorable producer-category movement cannot by itself demonstrate relief for a family. These are two separate BLS releases, not independent institutional corroboration, and the figures retain their November 2022 vintage. [ppi2022][cpi2022]
Source documents
- Consumer Price Index, October 2022https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi_11102022.htm
- Producer Price Indexes, October 2022https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ppi_11152022.htm