PPI, Retail Sales Jump, Claims Stay Resilient

Thursday, October 15th, 2026

A high number of economic reports have hit the tape today, an hour before the opening bell. These include wholesale inflation metrics, Retail Sales, regional manufacturing surveys and, of course, Weekly Jobless Claims. Unlike yesterday, however, the eyebrow-raising numbers are not leading immediately toward a drop in equity futures and a rise in bond yields — or at least to much less severe levels.
 

PPI +6.3% YoY: Highest in More than 3 Years

The September Producer Price Index (PPI) report this morning follows a slightly hotter-than-expected Consumer Price Index (CPI) yesterday morning — and its numbers are jumping much higher. Month-over-month headline PPI more than doubled expectations — +1.3% versus +0.6% — and more than 3x the previous month’s unrevised +0.4%. It’s the second-highest monthly print in 15 years. Trade and distribution margins “expanded significantly,” largely due to AI infrastructure buildouts and freight/transportation costs.

Year over year, headline PPI jumped +90 basis points (bps) from the prior month to +6.3%, much higher than the +5.5% increase analysts had been expecting. This is double the 76-year average PPI per month, and the highest number we’ve seen since January 2023, when PPI was coming down precipitously each month from its +9.7% peak in March of 2022. 

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices on the wholesale level, the core PPI month over month for September came in more than double expectations: +0.7% from +0.3% projected, and the unrevised +0.2% from August. Ex-food, energy and trade only comes down a bit: +0.5%. Core year over year was up +40 bps from the prior month to +5.0%, and this number does not move when we adjust to food, energy and trade. Even subtracting the costs of fuel and the delivery of food, we see inflation levels currently more than double the Fed’s optimal +2.0% inflation rate.
 

Myriad Other Econ Data: Claims, Retail Sales & More

Like any normal Thursday, Initial Jobless Claims are out this morning, as well. Here we see little movement from the historically excellent numbers on unemployment filings: +199K, down from the +2K estimated and +1K from the upwardly revised previous week. Continuing Jobless Claims, reported a week in arrears, came down further to 1.710 million — now the fifth-straight week sub-1.73 million longer-term jobless claims.

Retail Sales for September doubled expectations — +0.8% versus +0.4% projected — following an upwardly revised +1.3% for the prior month. These figures, not adjusted for inflation, saw gas stations soar +6.4% (for obvious reasons). Stripping out high-ticket-item auto sales, this number adjusts to +0.9%, even as we saw drops in clothing, sporting goods, garden equipment, and the like. So consumer spending continues to do its part for the U.S. economy.

Manufacturing releases from both Empire State and Philly Fed — both for October — were headed in different directions this morning. New York’s Empire State survey posted +25.5, more than double the +10.3 expected, and the strongest single month since December 2021. This was before the two-year recession in Empire State manufacturing between mid-2023 to mid-2025. New orders rose, as did stronger shipments.

Philly Fed, the eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey manufacturing survey, slipped to +20.9 from an expected +32, marking the slowest expansion since June. It’s a level not to sneeze at, but depicts slowing growth in both orders and shipments. Prices paid dropped -5 points in the month, while prices received rose +9 points, to their highest level since May 2025.

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