As concerns about whether the pace of progress in reducing inflation has slowed, a measure of wholesale prices increased more than anticipated in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Thursday.
In comparison to the Dow Jones consensus projection of 0.2%, the producer price index, or PPI, which gauges what producers receive for their goods at the final demand stage, grew by 0.4% for the month. PPI increased 3% annually, the largest increase since February 2023.
But when food and energy were taken out of the equation, the core PPI rose by 0.2%, as predicted. Additionally, the PPI increase was only 0.1% once trade services were subtracted. Additionally, the 3.5% year-over-year gain was the most since February 2023.
In other economic news on Thursday, the Labor Department announced that the number of first-time unemployment insurance claims for the week ending December 7 was a seasonally adjusted 242,000, which was 17,000 more than the previous period and significantly more than the 220,000 estimate.
There was conflicting news regarding inflation.
The largest increase since February of this year was a 0.7% monthly increase in final-demand goods prices. According to the BLS, a 3.1% increase in food costs was responsible for around 80% of the change.
Chicken eggs increased 54.6% within the food category, following a general acceleration in products like poultry, fresh fruits, and dry vegetables. In a separate report on consumer prices released Wednesday, the BLS said that retail egg prices increased 8.2% for the month and 37.5% over the previous year.
A 0.8% increase in trade drove a 0.2% increase in services prices.
The BLS announced the PPI release one day after the consumer pricing index, or CPI, a more often used indicator of inflation, also edged upward in November, rising to 2.7% on a 12-month basis and 0.3% month over month.
The markets largely anticipate that the Federal Reserve will reduce its benchmark overnight borrowing rate next week, despite the inflation rate’s seeming stubbornness. When the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee wraps up its meeting on Wednesday, futures market traders are hinting that a quarter percentage point drop is almost probable.
Economists largely saw this week’s data as benign after it was released, with underlying signs continuing to suggest that there would be sufficient disinflation to eventually bring the Fed back to its 2% objective.
The Fed’s main inflation indicator and forecasting tool is the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures price index, or PCE. However, that indicator is based on statistics from the PPI and CPI.
According to an Atlanta Fed tracker, core PCE is up 0.2 percentage points to 3% and November PCE is up 0.3 percentage points to 2.6% from October. Core is typically seen by the Fed as a superior long-term indicator. According to several economists, the report’s findings indicate that PCE inflation will increase by less each month than they had anticipated.
Kurt Rankin, a senior economist at PNC, said that it seems that only an exogenous shock, such significant changes in tariff policy, might derail supply-side contributions to inflation’s return to the Fed’s 2.0% average aim in the near future.
Following the economic announcement, stock market futures were marginally down. Treasury yields were mixed while theodds of a rate cutnext week were still around 98%, according to the CME Group.
One reason markets expect the Fed to cut, even amid stubborn inflation, is that Fed officials are growing more concerned about the labor market. Nonfarm payrolls have posted gains every month since December 2020, but the increases have slowed lately, and Thursday brought news that layoffs could be increasing as unemployment lasts longer.
Jobless claims posted their highest level since early October, while continuing claims, which run a week behind, edged higher to 1.89 million. The four-week moving average of continuing claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, rose to its highest level in just over four years.
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