Commercial furniture prices rose 3.9% in the year to August as steel rose 23%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) producer price index for commercial furniture rose to 346.188 in August 2026. A producer price index, or PPI, tracks the prices that US manufacturers receive for what they make. This index is set to 1982=100 and is not seasonally adjusted. The August value is preliminary.

It is 0.5% above July and 3.9% above August 2025, and it rose for the fourth month in a row to the highest value in a series that FRED carries back to 1947. The August value is 1.8% above the 12-month average of 339.95, and it ranks first of the last 25 months.

The 12-month change reached 5.4% in January 2026, the highest since July 2023, and has run between 3.5% and 4.0% since April. (For scale, the BLS index for final demand, its broadest measure, rose 5.4% over the 12 months ended in August, unadjusted.)

Showcases, partitions, shelving and lockers rose the most, 7.1%, with 2.5% of that in August alone. The index for institutional furniture rose 5.1%. Within it, the index BLS titles public furniture for bars, bowling centers, cafeterias and restaurants rose 4.3%, and public building furniture rose 2.2%. Office furniture made from materials other than wood rose 4.0%.

Measured from January 2019, before the pandemic, the spread is wider. Restaurant, bar and cafeteria furniture is up 67.6%, public building furniture 61.1% and institutional furniture 60.5%. The commercial furniture index is up 49.5%.

The materials moved faster. Steel mill products rose 1.7% in August and 23.4% over the year. Aluminum mill shapes fell 4.4% in August, and the BLS release names them among the month’s decreases, but they are still 27.3% above August 2025. Plywood rose 10.7%, lumber 7.6% and thermoplastic resins 7.3%. Since January 2019, steel mill products are up 72.6% and aluminum mill shapes 84.3%.

The PPI shows prices, and it carries no figures on manufacturers’ costs or margins. So these indexes cannot say how much of the metal increase has reached furniture prices so far.

BLS states in its technical notes that the PPI excludes imports. A project that buys imported seating faces a separate cost. Since October 14, 2025, imports of certain upholstered wooden products have carried a 25% tariff under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Proclamation 11000, published in the Federal Register on January 9, 2026, moved the scheduled increase to 30% from January 1, 2026 to January 1, 2027, except for countries that reach an agreement with the United States on wood products.

The results run from $1,021,900 with public building furniture to $1,071,500 with showcases, partitions, shelving and lockers, a difference of $49,600 on the same budget.

Name the series in any furniture escalation clause. Give the series ID, such as WPU122 or PCU337127337127, and the base month. Say whether the clause uses the first value BLS publishes or the value after BLS revises it, up to four months later, since the two can differ.

Ask for a quote on the package. The PPI measures what domestic producers receive and leaves out imports and taxes. For the price of a specific package, ask suppliers to quote it.