The prices that producers receive for goods and services declined in August, a mild respite from inflation pressures that are threatening to send the U.S. economy into recession.
The producer price index, a gauge of prices received at the wholesale level, declined 0.1%, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Wednesday. Excluding food, energy and trade services, core PPI increased 0.2%.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting headline PPI to decline 0.1% and core to rise 0.3%.
On a year-over-year basis, headline PPI increased 8.7%, a substantial pullback from the 9.8% increase in July and the lowest annual rise since August 2021. Core PPI increased 5.6% from a year ago, matching the lowest rate since June 2021.
As has been the case over the summer, the drop in prices came largely from a decline in energy.
The index for final demand energy slid 6% in August, which saw a 12.7% slide in the gasoline index. That helped feed through to consumer prices, which fell sharply after briefly surpassing $5 a gallon at the pump earlier in the summer.
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