Sources and method

Source

Every figure on the material prices pages and in the monthly reports comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index (PPI) by commodity, not seasonally adjusted. We pull it from the BLS public data API. The data runs from January 2007 to August 2026 and was last pulled on October 9, 2026.

What the Producer Price Index measures

The PPI tracks the prices domestic producers receive for their output, before distribution and retail markups. It is an index, not a dollar price: a value only means something compared with the same series in another month. Supplier and retail prices generally move in the same direction, with their own markups and timing, so these pages are for trends, bid holding periods and escalation, not for the number on a bid.

How the numbers are calculated

• Change vs. last month, a year ago and five years ago: the index this month divided by the index that many months earlier, minus one.
• Charts: the index rebased so the first month in the window equals 100. A reading of 110 means 10% higher than at the start of the window.
• “A $10,000 purchase”: $10,000 times the ratio of the index between the two months. It shows the size of the change, not what any supplier charged.
• Not seasonally adjusted: we compare against the same month a year earlier for the headline, which removes most seasonal patterns. Month-to-month changes can include seasonal swings, especially for asphalt and concrete.

Updates and revisions

BLS publishes the PPI for each month around the middle of the following month. We refresh the data after each release and publish a new report; past months stay in the report archive. BLS marks the latest four months as preliminary and revises them; pages show “preliminary” on those months, and earlier reports update when a figure is revised.

Reusing the data

BLS data is in the public domain. Our compilation, charts and reports are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit BuildWorkPro with a link to the page you used. Each material page has a ready-made citation, and every series is in one CSV. BLS does not endorse BuildWorkPro or these pages.

Series we use