PPIACO: US Producer Price Index All Commodities — Monthly Series Since 1913

The PPIACO series, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and mirrored on FRED, tracks the US Producer Price Index for All Commodities since 1913 — one of the longest continuous economic time series in the United States. PPIACO measures prices received by domestic producers for their output at the wholesale stage, before goods reach consumers. It captures commodity input costs, supply-chain pressures, and corporate margin dynamics that historically feed through to consumer prices with a 1-3 month lag.

Dataset: US Producer Price Index — PPI (1913–2026) · Updated —

Source: FRED series PPIACO · Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) via FRED

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The underlying data is available from FRED under series code PPIACO:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=PPIACO

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-ppi.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-ppi.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df["ppi_index"].describe())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-ppi.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$ppi_index)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

PPIACO is the Producer Price Index for All Commodities, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from a monthly survey of approximately 25,000 establishments selling roughly 100,000 individual products. The All Commodities index aggregates price changes across crude, intermediate, and finished goods, weighted by their share of US shipments — making it a broad-stage measure of wholesale price pressure across the entire production chain.

The series predates the modern Final Demand-Intermediate Demand (FD-ID) PPI framework introduced in January 2014. Since that reform, the BLS recommends PPIFIS (Final Demand) for current policy analysis, but PPIACO remains the only PPI variant with a continuous monthly series back to 1913, and is the standard reference for long-horizon historical work.

This Eco3min dataset is updated monthly (typically within two weeks of the BLS Producer Price Index release) via automated pull from the FRED API.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

PPIACO is one of the longest continuous US price series and a workhorse input for long-horizon inflation studies. Eco3min mirrors FRED with a daily pull, capturing each BLS release shortly after publication.

• Release latency. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Producer Price Index report in the second or third week of each month (typically the 9th to 15th), with data for the prior month. PPIACO is included in that release.
• Revisions policy. BLS revises PPI data four months back on each monthly release as late-arriving responses are incorporated. A more substantial annual revision occurs each February. PPIACO observations older than five months are generally final.
• Alternative sources. Direct from BLS at bls.gov/ppi, Bloomberg PPIACO Index, Refinitiv/LSEG, and Haver Analytics provide the same underlying series. The BLS PPI database also publishes detailed sub-indexes (commodity groups, industry indexes, FD-ID variants) that are useful for decomposition work.
• Known gaps. The series is continuous monthly since January 1913, but pre-1947 data uses different sampling and reporting methodologies than the modern series. The 2014 transition to the FD-ID framework introduced PPIACO’s modern companions (PPIFIS, PPIFGS, PPIFCS) but did not interrupt PPIACO itself.

Before using PPIACO in any analysis, verify the latest observation date against the BLS release calendar to confirm whether the most recent print is reflected in the cached dataset.

Common Pitfalls When Using PPIACO

PPIACO is a foundational inflation series but several recurring interpretation errors weaken downstream analysis — particularly in cross-series comparison work.

1. Confusing PPIACO with PPI Final Demand. PPIACO (“All Commodities”) aggregates prices across all stages of production — crude, intermediate, finished — and double-counts inputs that move between stages. PPI Final Demand (PPIFIS, introduced 2014) tracks only goods and services sold to final users and is the BLS-recommended headline measure for current policy work. Substituting one for the other in modern analysis produces inconsistent results.
2. Reading the index level vs the rate of change. The raw FRED series returns the index level (base 1982=100), while inflation discussions reference PPIACO YoY (or sometimes month-over-month annualized). Running level-on-level regressions or comparing absolute index points across decades produces misleading results when the underlying question is about the rate of price change.
3. Assuming a fixed PPI-to-CPI pass-through lag. The “1-3 month lead” is an empirical regularity averaged across multiple regimes, not a constant. Pass-through varies with margin elasticity, demand conditions, and the nature of the shock (commodity vs labor vs financial). Recent decades (post-2000) have shown weaker and more variable pass-through than the 1970s.
4. Ignoring the pre-1947 methodology break. PPIACO observations before 1947 come from a different sampling frame, narrower commodity coverage, and reporting conventions. Long-horizon volatility comparisons (e.g., 1920s vs 2000s) should treat the pre-WWII portion of PPIACO as a separate sub-series rather than directly comparable to modern observations.

Historical Regimes

1913–1929 — War boom and reversion. PPIACO surged during World War I (commodity demand, monetary expansion), peaked above 130% YoY in 1917, then collapsed in the 1920–21 depression. The series settled into a deflationary trend through the late 1920s as productivity gains compressed wholesale prices.

1929–1945 — Great Depression and WWII. PPIACO recorded the deepest sustained deflation in the US historical record (1929–1933), with annual declines exceeding 10%. The 1933 inflection coincided with the New Deal’s reflationary policies. WWII reintroduced strong commodity inflation, partially suppressed by wartime price controls.

1946–1965 — Bretton Woods stability. After a brief post-war spike (price controls lifted in 1946-48), PPIACO YoY oscillated in a 0-4% band through the Bretton Woods era. The 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord and the Korean War boom produced transient spikes but no sustained inflation regime.

1966–1982 — The Great Inflation. PPIACO climbed steadily from the late 1960s, surging during the 1973-74 and 1979-80 oil shocks. The 1973 OPEC embargo pushed PPIACO YoY above 25%; the 1979 Iranian Revolution pushed it above 17%. The Volcker disinflation broke the trend, with PPIACO YoY turning negative in 1986.

1983–2007 — The Great Moderation. PPIACO YoY averaged around 2% in a wide 0-6% range, occasionally turning negative during commodity cycle downturns. The series remained well-behaved despite expanding global trade and the 2000s commodity supercycle.

2008–2009 — GFC commodity crash. PPIACO YoY swung from +9% in mid-2008 to -7% by mid-2009 — the sharpest peak-to-trough move since the early 1980s. The crash reflected synchronized global demand collapse and commodity unwind.

2010–2019 — Prolonged disinflation. PPIACO YoY trended at low single digits, with periodic dips into negative territory (2015-2016) tied to the oil and shale collapse. Pass-through to Core CPI weakened relative to historical norms.

2020–2022 — COVID supply shock. PPIACO YoY peaked above 22% in 2022 — the highest reading since 1981 — driven by supply-chain disruption, energy shocks, and post-pandemic demand normalization. The PPI surge led the parallel PCE spike by roughly two quarters.

2023–2026 — Pipeline normalization. PPIACO YoY retraced toward its historical 1-3% range as supply chains normalized and commodity prices stabilized. Lingering services-side pressure in CPI did not fully reflect into PPI, illustrating how upstream and downstream inflation can decouple.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

PPIACO is the upstream node of the inflation pipeline. Reading it in isolation strips out the corporate margin and consumer-side dynamics that determine whether wholesale moves transmit into the policy-relevant inflation gauges.

Macroeconomic Dataset Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.

Explore the Eco3min Dataset Hub

Sources

• Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — Producer Price Index release
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED database, series PPIACO

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). US Producer Price Index — PPIACO (1913–2026).<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/us-producer-price-index-dataset/