A measure of wholesale price rose more than expected in November, adding fuel to the belief that progress in bringing down inflation has slowed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.
The producer price index, which measures what producers get for their products at the final-demand stage, increased 0.4% for the month, higher than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 0.2%. On an annual basis, PPI rose 3%, the biggest advance since February 2023.
However, excluding food and energy, core PPI increased 0.2%, meeting the forecast. Also, subtracting trade services left the PPI increase at just 0.1%.
In other economic news Thursday, the Labor Department reported that first-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled a seasonally adjusted 242,000 for the week ending Dec. 7, considerably higher than the 220,000 forecast and up 17,000 from the prior period.
On the inflation front, the news was mixed.
Final-demand goods prices leaped 0.7% on the month,. the biggest move since February of this year. Some 80% of the move came from a 3.1% surge in food prices, according to the BLS.
Within the food category, chicken eggs soared 54.6%, joining an across-the-board acceleration in items such as dry vegetables, fresh fruits and poultry. Egg prices at the retail level swelled 8.2% on the month and were up 37.5% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate report Wednesday on consumer prices.
The PPI release comes a day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index, a more widely cited inflation gauge, also nudged higher in November to 2.7% on a 12-month basis and 0.3% month over month.
Despite the seemingly stubborn state of inflation, markets overwhelmingly expect the Federal Reserve to lower is key overnight borrowing rate next week. Futures markets traders are implying a near-certainty to a quarter percentage point reduction when the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee concludes its meeting Wednesday.
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