Producer prices surge 1.0% in March

WASHINGTON – The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, a measure of wholesale prices, rose 1.0 percent last month after seasonal adjustment, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The gain, which exceeded the 0.7-percent median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, followed a 1.3-percent rise in February and a 0.6-percent decline in January.
The index excluding food and energy was unchanged last month, the BLS said, after rising 0.4 percent in February. It credited a decline in prices for light trucks.
The PPI of 164.2 points (1982 = 100) was 3.2 percent higher than in March 2006, the
BLS said. Excluding food and energy, it was 1.7 percent higher.
“Producer inflation is just high enough to keep the Fed on edge,” Steven Wood, president of Insight Economics LLC in Danville, Calif., told Bloomberg. “It is not high enough to encourage them to tighten, but it is also not low enough or receding fast enough to encourage them to ease any time soon.”
Additional information, including the 18-page Producer Price Indexes report, can be found at www.bls.gov.ppi.