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| February Producer Prices (#1) - Mar. 21, 2006 |
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Summary
The Labor Department completed its inflation fantasies reporting cycle for February earlier today, with the news that producer prices plunged 1.4% in February.
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* Earlier today, the Labor Department reported that the Producer Price Index plunged 1.4% during February, which compared with a 0.3% rise in January.
* February's slide was led by a 4.7% decline in energy prices. Costs in this sector were reported unchanged in January.
* Also contributing to the PPI's February decline was a 2.7% drop in food prices. This reversed a 0.2% increase in January.
* Excluding food and energy, or the so-called "core" rate, the PPI was up 0.3% during February. This compared with January's rise of 0.4%.
* The consensus estimates for the overall as well as core results were around minus 0.2% and +0.1%, respectively.
* For the 12 months ended February 2006, the overall PPI stood 3.8% higher than a year earlier. During the 12 months ended February 2005, this figure was +4.7%.
* The 12-month change in the PPI's core rate as of February 2006 was 1.7%, which compared with a 2.7% gain for the 12 months ended February 2005.
Now that the Labor Department has released the third and last of the government inflation series we follow closely each month (import prices, CPI and PPI), I will publish a more detailed statistical analysis of all three measures. This will incorporate some small revisions contained in today's report. I also will update the "Inflation Watch" graph on the home page of the GRA website.
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