Inflation at the wholesale level continued to worsen in June as producer prices soared a near-record amount from a year ago, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures the prices received for final demand products, “increased 1.1 percent in June… This rise followed advances of 0.9 percent in May and 0.4 percent in April,” the report states.
“On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 11.3 percent for the 12 months ended in June, the largest increase since a record 11.6-percent jump in March 2022,” the report adds.
The news comes the day after a separate report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that inflation for consumers rose 9.1% from the year before, the highest rate since November 1981.
The figure was even worse than economists expected, according to CNBC. “The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services related to the cost of living, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate,” CNBC reported. “Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI increased 5.9%, compared with the 5.7% estimate… On a monthly basis, headline CPI rose 1.3% and core CPI was up 0.7%, compared to respective estimates of 1.1% and 0.5%.”
Due to record high inflation, the real wages of American workers fell 4.4% over the last year and 1% over the last month.
“Real average hourly earnings for all employees decreased 1.0 percent from May to June,” a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states. “This result stems from an increase of 0.3 percent in average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 1.3 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).”
“Real average hourly earnings decreased 3.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, from June 2021 to June 2022,” the report adds. “The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 4.4-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.”
