The Consumer Price Index is used to calculate inflation, or the change in price of a basket of goods and services, as it impacts consumers; whereas, the Producer Price Index measures changes in selling prices, thereby expressing price changes from the perspective of the seller who produces a particular commodity.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has updated their data collection to increase accuracy. Starting in 2018 the BLS will only collect data for metropolitan areas of over 2.5 million and under 2.5 million, moving from three class sizes to two class sizes. Smaller non-urban areas have been absorbed into the under 2.5 million class size and data will still be collected from these areas.
A slide presentation updated with January 2018 data shows the Midwest inflation rate increased from December to January for larger uban metro areas. The smaller metropolitan areas noticed a 0.57 percent increase.
The Producer Price Index data shows that prices in the United States have increased from January 2017 to January 2018 for aircraft (0.9 percent), slaughter livestock (2.3 percent), crude petroleum (30.3), wheat (12.5 percent) and sorghum (17.6 percent). During that same time period, the index decreased for natural gas (-30.9 percent).