A month of war seems to have had little impact.
Excluding food and energy, core PPI was up just 0.1% against the forecast for 0.5%. The services side of inflation — a key focus for Federal Reserve policymakers — was flat on the month.
DB2
4 Likes
Call me in four months when the revisions are finalized.
6 Likes
No need to have waited at all to see the impact.
PPI of 0.5% month over month (March) is over 6% annualized (looks like it was revised up to 0.7% in the latest release, over 8.4% annualized).
Here’s April:
The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 1.4 percent in April, seasonally adjusted [over 16.8% annualized]
The April increase is the largest advance since rising 1.7 percent in March 2022.
On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand [PPI] rose 6.0
percent for the 12 months ended in April, the largest 12-month increase since moving up 6.4
percent in December 2022.
Energy prices rose 10.1% and 7.8% in March and April (these are increases over a single month).
Second opinion: Looks impactful.
7 Likes
The flip side of this coin is layoffs.
I wanted to find the weekly data. This source by US Today is interesting. There is some US labor Department model data, but most of it is the nominal numbers.
This goes beyond the tech and bigger business sectors into the smaller industrial layoffs. Blue collar layoffs. Right now things are ok, but we will see in this source if things get a lot worse as I expect they will.