WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices on U.S.-made women’s and girls’ apparel fell a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent in November and were 0.5 percent lower than a year earlier.
However, the Labor Department’s monthly Producer Price Index, released Tuesday, also revealed that prices on all domestically made goods were rising after several months of declines. The overall PPI rose 2 percent in November after falling 1.6 percent in October, driven in large part by higher energy prices, which went up 6.1 percent. It was the largest single-month increase in more than 32 years.
Stripping away volatile food and energy prices, so-called core prices increased 1.3 percent in November — the most since 1980 — after falling 0.9 percent in October.
Kenneth Beauchemin, U.S. economist at Global Insight, attributed the 2 percent jump in the overall index to rebounding light truck prices of 13.7 percent and a swing in gasoline prices, which were up 17.9 percent in November after falling 22.2 percent and 7.9 percent in September and October, respectively.
“Viewing the past two to three months through a single lens reveals relative calm in [overall] and core producer prices,” Beauchemin wrote in a report.
For complete coverage see tomorrow’s issue of WWD.