Impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the Producer Price Index data for April 2020

The Producer Price Index (PPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices domestic producers receive for the sale of their products. PPI estimates for April 2020 were published on May 13, 2020. The pricing date was Tuesday, April 13, 2020, which means that most producers, but not all, provided prices they received on that date. The summary statistics in tables 1, 2, and 3 indicate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the PPI data collection, index estimation, and the BLS ability to publish indexes was minor for the release of preliminary April data. No changes in estimation procedures were necessary.

Table 1 provides the April 2020 response rate by industry sector, along with comparison periods of March 2020, April 2019, and a 12-month average for April 2019 to March 2020. The April 2020 response rate for items requested shows a similar level of response for the vast majority of industry sectors. Only the Entertainment, Accommodation, and Food Services sector shows a noticeable yet moderate decline.

It is important to note that typically the PPI survey’s monthly price collection response rate reaches 76 percent by the end of its 4-month index revision period. All PPI indexes are recalculated, 4 months after publication of preliminary data. Thus, April indexes may be revised when BLS publishes the PPI for August on September 10, 2020. All summary statistics in the tables below reflect comparisons to preliminary PPI data.

When a respondent does not provide a price for an item, BLS employs an imputation method of replacing that missing price with a statistically estimated value. The first row of table 2 indicates that the April 2020 item imputation rate of 36 percent is on par with the comparison periods.

BLS calculates over 10,000 PPIs for individual products and groups of products for publication during the release of preliminary data. The second row of table 2 shows the April 2020 publication rate of 89 percent is in line with the comparison periods. BLS suppresses indexes when they fail to meet publication criteria. Because of additional collection efforts and the addition of late-arriving data, these suppressed indexes often will meet publication criteria at the end of the 4-month index revision period, at which time they are published. Further illustrating the nominal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the third row of table 2 shows the percent of industry indexes that BLS was unable to calculate because BLS did not received any prices. This proportion of not calculated indexes is similar to the normal result.

Table 3 takes a closer look at the not calculated PPI indexes by industry and shows that, across all industry sectors, there is no discernable difference between April’s result when compared with earlier periods.

Last Modified Date: May 13, 2020