Labor Department to finally release January report of wholesale price inflation Thursday.
March 17, 2004: 11:56 AM EST
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its January producer price index data Thursday morning, the agency said Wednesday.
The PPI, a measure of wholesale inflation, had been delayed indefinitely while the BLS changed industry classifications it used in the report. A statement on the BLS website said the January report will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET.
The BLS still has no scheduled release date for the February data. There has been no PPI report since the December report on Jan. 14.
In a separate report on Wednesday, the BLS said its consumer price index (CPI) rose modestly in February, matching Wall Street expectations.
The PPI isn't often a market-moving economic report. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Feb. 17 that it was delaying the measure indefinitely, the reaction on Wall Street wasn't exactly panic -- more like amusement.
But some economists are growing increasingly nervous about the prospect of inflation, and the PPI's absence has meant an absence of some key data on inflation.
What's more, the PPI could be useful in judging how well companies are able to raise profits by passing wholesale price increases on to consumers.
"The longer you go on without it, the greater the chance of some nasty surprise lurking in there that we're missing," said Anirvan Banerji, co-director of research at the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a private research firm that publishes its own monthly inflation gauge.
In December, PPI rose 0.3 percent after falling 0.3 percent in November. Core PPI, which strips out food and energy, fell 0.1 percent in December, matching November's 0.1-percent decline.
In the 12 months ended in December, the PPI for finished goods had risen 4 percent, the fastest growth rate since March 2003.
Economists, on average, believe PPI rose 0.4 percent and core PPI rose 0.1 percent in January, according to Briefing.com.
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