US August PPI Rises 0.4% From Prior Month, Matching Estimates

U.S. producer prices rose in August in line with market expectations.

The Labor Department said on September 10 that the producer price index rose 0.4% from the previous month. That matched economists’ forecast for a 0.4% increase.

The reading was 0.3 percentage point above July’s revised 0.1% gain. From a year earlier, the index rose 5.4%, 0.1 percentage point above the market forecast of 5.3%.

Core PPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.2% from the previous month. That was 0.1 percentage point below the market estimate of 0.3%.

The core reading was 0.1 percentage point lower than July’s revised 0.3% increase.

PPI measures changes in companies’ input costs, including raw materials, labor and energy. A higher PPI reading is viewed as a leading indicator of consumer inflation because companies tend to pass rising production costs on to consumers over time.