By Patrick Sullivan
The U.S. producer price index rose 0.2% in November from the prior month, below a Wall Street Journal forecast for 0.3%. The reading falls inside a range of historical forecasts for the indicator.
Excluding food and energy, November prices were flat from October, which was below The Wall Street Journal forecast of 0.2%, but still inside a range of historical forecasts for the indicator.
For select economic indicators, including PPI, Dow Jones Newswires has started measuring whether a reported government statistic falls outside a historical range of proprietary WSJ forecasting, and if so, by how much. Those forecast ranges are based on an archive of surveys of economists the Journal has conducted over the past decade.
The range provides a way to measure the relative volatility of any one particular indicator, compared not just with a contemporary forecast in the days ahead of an indicator's release, but also compared with its track record of surprising forecasters over time.
In the case of November PPI, the range of WSJ forecasts relative to the actual reported number over that period was -0.2 percentage point to +0.3 percentage point.
For November PPI excluding food and energy, the range of WSJ forecasts relative to the actual reported number over that period was -0.25 percentage point to +0.2 percentage point.
The ranges are made up of the median of historical forecasts that came in lower than the reported number and the median of forecasts that came in higher.
Economists typically watch the PPI numbers closely because some of the underlying data is used in calculating the personal-consumption expenditures price index, the inflation metric that the Federal Reserve uses to gauge progress against its 2% inflation target.
By Patrick Sullivan at patrick.sullivan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 14, 2026 09:15 ET (14:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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