Wholesale prices see slight rise in Oct.

Wholesale prices nudged a bit higher last month. The producer price index, which tracks inflation before it hits consumers, increased 0.2%, up one-tenth of a percentage point from September.

Economics expert Jared Pincin said wholesale prices going up didn’t come as a big surprise.

“The numbers were not out of expectations,” Pincin said.

Labor Department numbers show that compared to a year ago, wholesale prices were up 2.4%. But Pincin says it’s important to understand that doesn’t mean a producer’s production costs have gone up 2.4%.

“It’s what they have sold their products to, for example to a wholesaler,” said Pincin.

So if wholesalers are paying more, what does that mean for consumers? Pincin says he believes those extra costs could get passed down.

“If those are going up then that eventually will trickle down to consumer prices,” Pincin said.

But marketing expert Saloni Firasta Vastani said she believes this increase might not be significant enough to get passed down.

0.1% is not enough for them to respond immediately with a price increase,” Vastani said.

Plus, with Fed chair Jerome Powell saying that interest rates might not be much lower over the next few months, Vastani says it will be interesting to see what happens.

“As we’re trying to tweak this delicate balance between reducing the overall interest rates without causing inflation, we’re going to see some of these sort of changes,” said Vastani.

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