US producer prices dropped in December by the most since the start of the pandemic, extending a months-long pullback in inflationary pressures and giving the Federal Reserve room to slow the pace of interest-rate hikes.
The producer price index for final demand fell 0.5% last month, the most since April 2020, and was up 6.2% from a year earlier, Labor Department data showed Wednesday. The median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for the index to fall 0.1% from a month earlier and rise 6.8% from December 2021.
