by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
2024, the year of sharp acceleration. Services, accounting for two-thirds of PPI, are where inflation is festering and accelerating.
This time, the prior months’ data of the Producer Price Index were revised up by relatively small amounts, unlike the whopper up-revisions over the past four months. So November’s overall PPI reading was revised up to a year-over-year increase of 3.00%, from 2.98% reported a month ago. So that lack of big up-revisions was refreshing.
But then the December PPI, as reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accelerated to an increase of 3.31%, driven largely by services, which account for two-thirds of the overall PPI, and which accelerated to 4.03%. Both increases were the worst since February 2023.