Wholesale Prices Rise 6.3 Percent From a Year Ago, the Fastest Pace Since 2022

Prices that businesses receive for their goods and services rose 6.3 percent in September from a year earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday, the highest rate since late 2022 and a sign that the inflation squeezing consumers is also building up in the supply chain.

The producer price index, which tracks what domestic producers charge before goods reach store shelves, beat economists’ forecasts on every major measure, NBC News reported. Goods prices rose 2.6 percent in September alone and services 0.8 percent. A core measure that strips out food, energy and trade services was up 5 percent from a year earlier.

Energy drove much of the increase. Producer prices rose 1.3 percent for the month. Gasoline, up 20.3 percent, accounted for half of the rise in goods prices, the agency said, and prices also climbed for diesel, jet fuel, residential electric power and crude petroleum. Oil and fuel prices have soared since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February. Fresh and dry vegetables were among the food items that rose.

Economists singled out diesel as the most worrying of the recent increases, because it powers the farms, trucks and ships that move nearly everything. Unlike earlier in the year, when price increases were concentrated in industries heavily exposed to fuel, the latest gains are spread more broadly across the economy.

The producer index is often read as an early signal for consumer prices. A day earlier, the government reported that consumer prices rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier in September.

The figures add to pressure on the Federal Reserve, which meets Oct. 27 and 28 and raised rates last month. The report could push the central bank to act sooner than many investors had expected. Borrowing is already expensive: Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 7.40 percent.

Markets were jittery. According to NBC News, which the paper could not independently confirm, investors moved money out of interest-rate-sensitive technology stocks and into bonds, pulling yields down in early trading, and by the close the S&P 500 sat about 1 percent below the record it set a week earlier and the Nasdaq Composite more than 3 percent below its peak, amid broader doubts about the payoff from heavy spending on artificial intelligence.

There are reasons for caution in reading a single month. Producer prices are more volatile than consumer prices, and not every increase at the wholesale level is passed on in full; businesses sometimes absorb costs to protect sales. If oil prices ease, some of the energy-driven gains could reverse. But with core producer prices also running hot, economists said the risk is that higher costs keep working their way into what households pay.