Changes Made by the BLS in PPI Table 9 Commodity Codes in 2025

Information About Changes Made by the BLS in PPI Table 9 Commodity Codes in 2025

In the fall of each year, we notify clients of changes made by the BLS during the past year, we notify clients of changes made by the BLS during the past year to add, discontinue or recode (PPI code not discontinued but assigned a different code) PPI Table 9 commodity codes. Before we make that notification, we perform a substantial amount of work that is required so that: 1) we communicate with our clients about these changes and make available to them an Excel file that reflects these changes that can be used in the assignment of PPI codes for clients that do this work (many clients outsource their PPI coding work to us) and 2) we take steps necessary to ensure that our LIFOPro software supports these changes.

Excel file update

We update an Excel file named LIFOPROCompletePPITable9CodeList.xlsx to reflect these changes (the leftmost sheet of this file will include the changes made for the most recent year). This file should be used for those making assignments of PPI codes to inventory items. When a =vlookup() Excel formula is used to look up the PPI category name for a PPI code assignment (this cell should be to the right of the PPI code entry cell), a #N/A will be returned if the code assigned is not a valid PPI code published by the BLS. If a PPI code has been discontinued or recoded, the entry returned by the =vlookup() will show a warning, e.g., <<Discon. after 6/2025>> that is the prefix to that PPI code description and the suffix of that description will be e.g., ;Use 11660657. There are over 6,200 PPI codes in this sheet but less than 3,000 of these are codes for which the BLS currently publishes indexes. The inclusion also of the 3,200+ discontinued or recoded from codes is very helpful in providing a historical record for these changes. The second to the left sheet of this file is named NewRecodedDisconIn2025. This sheet provides a complete accounting of the changes in PPI codes during the year. There are 204 rows in this sheet because of the substantial changes made by the BLS this year. We make this Excel file available to clients by sending an email message which includes a link to access this file.

Software file update

At the same time that the Excel file is updated for these changes, we also make changes to a file which our software uses to define the PPI codes supported by our software and to also define which PPI codes have been officially discontinued or recoded by the BLS  and when they were discontinued along with our specification of which PPI code we think ought to be used as the replacement code. This file is named catname.ppi. The most recent version of this file is uploaded to the web server whenever any changes are made to it and this file will be downloaded each month at the same time the indx2025.ppi file is updated automatically by the software (or by manually downloading these files from our website when the automatic update software feature is disabled) with the most recent month’s indexes that are published on or about the 15th of each month.

For 2025, in addition to the routine changes of PPI codes added, discontinued or recoded during the year (which typically number 50 or less), the BLS announced in August 2025 that they had stopped publishing indexes for 117 additional PPI Table 9 commodity codes. The table below shows the number of PPI Table 9 codes added, discontinued or recoded during the year.

For the first 3 rows, the BLS communicated those changes by inclusion in Tables 18-20 of the PPI Detailed Report for that month which show the PPI codes added, discontinued or recoded as of that date. For the bottom row labeled August 2025 BLS announcement, the BLS made an announcement on their website about the additional changes and provided a link to a page on their website describing the changes. The link to this page is: https://www.bls.gov/ppi/notices/2025/bls-to-discontinue-selected-ppis.htm

In the PPI Table 9 commodity indexes section of this announcement, the BLS wrote “BLS is eliminating the following commodity indexes. These indexes are scheduled to be transitioned to their PPI discontinued database with the release of January 2026 PPI data in February 2026.”

15 of the 117 PPI codes discontinued starting in August 2025 have a PPI 2-digit code (the first two digits of the PPI commodity code) of 04 Hides, skins, leather, and related products. The PPI codes beginning with 04 that have been discontinued also includes the 04 code itself which measures the weighted average inflation of all the most detailed 04 codes. This is problematic for LIFO calculation purposes because when there are not both a current year and prior year index published for a PPI code to which inventory items have been assigned, the indexes for the less detailed PPI codes are used. If you are a company that outsources LIFO calculations to LIFOPro, we will deal with the implications of this change. If you have a license to use our LIFOPro software, you need additional information about this issue to know how to deal with this and will need to update your software version to 7.3 or later to properly deal with this issue. We will or have sent separate email messages about this to LIFOPro software users. You can access the PDF file that addresses this topic and describes the LIFOPro policy on how this issue will be dealt with here.