The producer price index for March, 2011 showed further increases monthly and yearly. For March the gain was 0.7% and on March YoY, it was up 5.7%. The core rate was up 2.0 YoY. Increases were seen primarily in oil related products, light trucks, and automobiles.
Here is a better way to look at it:
Of course if you take out oil and food, the increase looks more modest, but as you can see from the chart there is a steady increase since January, 2010.
Another way to look at things is to look at commodity prices, or crude materials, as the BLS measures it:
This appears to be a mixed bag until you look at the percentage gains in this YoY chart. Certainly crude materials are subject to supply and demand factors, but as I pointed out in Worldwide Inflation Is Impacting Recovery, I believe this is instead a strong inflation indicator.
