by Harry Wilmerding
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, surged to 9.7% on a year-over-year basis as of December 2021, marking the highest rate in history, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Thursday.
The BLS reported that the PPI grew 0.2% in December as prices continued to soar amid growing supply chain disruptions and COVID-19 concerns. As of November, the measure grew 9.6% on a year-over basis and 0.8% in that month alone.
Dow Jones economists projected the PPI would grow by 0.4% in December, according to CNBC.
“Persistent supply disruptions will pin producer prices near record levels in the near term, especially given a rapidly spreading Omicron variant that will fan inflation pressures,” Mahir Rasheed, U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said in a statement obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.5% in December, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 7%, the BLS reported Wednesday.
“The news today that Biden’s first year in office, the producer price index rose by an all-time high 9.7% – the highest annual rate ever – indicates that the Biden inflation contagion is a plague on the economy,” Stephen Moore, former economics adviser to former President Donald Trump, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“To stop this tidal wave of rising prices, Biden needs to stop pushing multi-trillion debt spending bills and the Fed needs to raise interest rates NOW,” Moore said. “This is not an agenda that is helping the middle class.”
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Harry Wilmerding is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
