What is the PPI (Producer Price Index)?
The Producer Price Index measures inflation at the factory gate. What does it count, how does it differ from CPI, and when does a PPI surprise move the dollar?
The Producer Price Index (PPI) measures inflation on the seller's side: the prices businesses receive for what they sell, before it reaches the final buyer. It lands within a day of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the market reads it as a hint of where consumer prices are heading.
What does the PPI measure?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which publishes it, describes the program as measuring "the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output."
The headline figure is final demand, which combines three groups: goods (food, energy and core goods), services (such as trade, and transportation and warehousing) and construction. Calendars also show a core PPI, usually the version excluding food and energy — the same idea as core CPI. Some reports quote a stricter core that also leaves out trade services, so check which one you are looking at.
How is it different from CPI?
They look at the same economy from opposite ends of the transaction:
| CPI | PPI | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose prices | What consumers pay | What producers receive |
| Where in the chain | The end | Earlier, as goods and services are sold |
| What traders use it for | The inflation households feel | An early read on cost pressure |
The link between them is not automatic. A company facing higher costs can pass them on, absorb them in its margin, or wait. That is why PPI is treated as a hint, not a forecast of the next CPI.
What have recent readings looked like?
| Release date | PPI final demand, month on month | Core PPI, month on month |
|---|---|---|
| 15 July 2026 | −0.3% | 0.1% |
| 13 August 2026 | 0.0% | 0.2% |
| 10 September 2026 | 0.4% | 0.2% |
These are the figures as first published — July's 0.0% showed up as 0.1% in the next release, as Action Forex noted — and the September headline comes from the BLS release itself. That release (August data) also showed final demand prices up 5.4% over twelve months, according to the BLS. The next one is scheduled for 15 October at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Does the PPI move forex?
It can, when it surprises. On 15 July, as our daily roundup recorded, the market read a soft US PPI as pressure on the dollar; on 10 September a hot one had the dollar firming. The mechanism is the usual one: more cost pressure means more inflation risk, which makes the Fed more likely to keep policy tight.
Usually, though, CPI is the main event. The two arrive within a day of each other — in July and August 2026 PPI came the day after CPI, in September the day before — so they are read as a pair. What matters is the surprise against the forecast, and a PPI that confirms the CPI story adds little.
What this post does not give you
It does not tell you how much of a PPI move will reach consumer prices, or when. That pass-through changes from one cycle to the next, and nobody publishes it in advance.
The takeaway
Read PPI as the upstream half of the inflation story. It rarely moves the dollar on its own, but when producer prices and consumer prices start pulling in different directions, it is worth knowing which one the market is choosing to believe.
