Producer Price Indexes of Sheet Steel, Aluminum, Plastic and Transportation in May 2014

Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics, (BLS) puts out its series of producer price indexes, for thousands of goods and materials. The latest release on Friday reported May results. These statistics are a useful way to evaluate any changes in the competitive position of steel against competing materials and this month for the first time we have included truck and rail transportation. See below for the official description of this program. The May report from the BLS began as follows; The Producer Price Index for final demand fell 0.2 percent in May, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This decline followed increases of 0.6 percent in April and 0.5 percent in March. The decline in final demand prices can be traced to the indexes for final demand services and final demand goods, both of which declined 0.2 percent. Within intermediate demand, prices for processed goods edged down 0.1 percent, the index for unprocessed goods was unchanged, and prices for services fell 0.4 percent.

For the purpose of this report, SMU has extracted comparative statistics for sheet steel, aluminum and plastic products and truck and rail transportation. Table 1 is a summary of each category on a year over one, two and three year basis. One cell in this table for plastic water pipe contains the code n/a because this data series is too new to make a 36 month comparison.