Energy PPIs closely track oil, gas, and electricity prices March
12, 1999 The Bureau of Labor Statistics periodically conducts
"reality checks" of the Producer Price Index (PPI) by comparing
its components with alternative price measures. Most recently,
BLS tested the elements of the energy commodities group, because
of the large relative importance of energy indexes in the
aggregate PPIs at all stages of processing. In all the tests,
the energy PPIs closely tracked the alternative price measures.
Month-to-month percent changes in six PPI energy product
indexes—natural gas, crude petroleum, fuel oil #2, gasoline,
residential electric power, and residential natural gas—were
compared to changes in alternative data sources. In the first
four cases, the alternative data were from the Energy
Information Administration; in the last two, the alternatives
were from the BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI). For all six
comparisons, there was a failure to reject the null hypothesis
that the means of the percent changes are t