A customer shops at a Whole Foods grocery store in Edgewater, N.J. on Sept. 11th, 2024.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
A measure of wholesale prices showed no change in September, pointing to a continued easing in inflation, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their goods and services, was flat for the month and up 1.8% from a year ago. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a monthly gain of 0.1% after August’s increase of 0.2%.
Excluding food and energy, the PPI rose 0.2%, meeting expectations.
The report comes a day after the Labor Department reported that the consumer price index, a more widely followed inflation measure that shows that consumers actually pay for goods and services, showed an increase of 0.2% for the month and 2.4% from a year ago.
Markets showed little reaction to the data, with stock market futures pointing slightly higher on Wall Street while Treasury yields rose on longer-duration securities.
Together, the releases indicate that inflation is off its blistering pace that peaked more than two years ago but still mostly holds above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Within the PPI, a 0.2% decline in final demand goods prices offset a 0.2% increase in services. Excluding trade services from core PPI, the index increased 0.1%.
A 3% jump in deposit services costs pushed the services index higher, while professional and commercial equipment wholesaling prices tumbled 6.3%.
On the goods side, a 2.7% slide in final demand in energy was the main factor in the decrease. Similarly, the index for gasoline fell 5.6%, holding back gains on the goods index. Diesel fuel prices plunged 17.6%.
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