U.S. producer prices jumped 1.3% in September—their largest monthly increase since March 2022—as energy costs surged, while consumer inflation accelerated to 3.7% over the year.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that its Producer Price Index for final demand rose more than twice as much as in August, when it increased 0.5%. On a year-over-year basis, producer prices were up 6.3%, the largest annual gain since December 2022. Energy drove much of the monthly increase: final-demand goods prices rose 2.6%, with more than 80% of that gain attributed to energy, while gasoline prices jumped 20.3%.
Prices for final-demand services rose 0.8%, and a measure excluding food, energy and trade services advanced 0.5%. The producer-price report followed Wednesday’s consumer-price data, which showed CPI up 3.7% from a year earlier and 0.6% from August. The two figures measure different stages of the economy: PPI tracks prices received by producers, while CPI measures prices paid by consumers.
Together, the reports point to renewed price pressure, though the data alone do not show how much of the higher costs businesses will pass on to households.