Construction Material Price Index Tracking, by Trade

Construction material price index tracking comes down to bookmarking four to six series that match what you actually buy, then checking them once a month. This post lists the specific ones by trade, with the series ID, what it covers, and where it stood at the most recent published reading. Every series is free from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at data.bls.gov/timeseries/ plus the ID.

Two ground rules before the lists. Index levels are meaningless on their own because base periods differ by series, so only percent change matters. And recent months carry a preliminary (P) flag and get revised, so re-pull before you quote a number to anyone. The full reading method is in reading the producer price index for construction materials.

The two headline series for anyone in construction

If you only watch two, watch these. They are the aggregate baskets, and they are what AGC of America quotes in its monthly releases.

That residential line is the one to keep in your head when someone tells you your numbers used to be lower. 206.1 as a 2016 annual average to 344.247 in June 2026 is a rise of roughly 67% over ten years on the goods side alone.

AGC packages the same data monthly with commentary, which saves you the arithmetic. In May 2026 they reported inputs to new nonresidential construction up 1.8% for the month and 8.4% year over year, the largest annual jump since the pandemic, with contractors’ bid prices up only 3.5%. By June the year-over-year figure was 7.1%, despite a 0.5% decline for the month. Note that AGC’s headline is the wider WPUIP231200, inputs to new nonresidential construction excluding capital investment, labor and imports, which is a different and broader basket than the goods-only line in the table above. Its June figures reproduce exactly; its May figures were as first published and have since been revised, which is the preliminary flag doing its job. One down month inside a sharply up year is exactly the kind of thing you want to be able to say out loud in an owner meeting.

Electrical

Copper and brass mill shapes is the workhorse. From January 2025 to June 2026 it ran 645.990 to 803.275 preliminary, about 24%. That is the series to reach for when your price on fittings, lugs, or anything cast or drawn from copper moves.

Wire has a proper commodity series and it is the one most electrical contractors should bookmark first. WPU10260314, “Copper wire and cable”, is a monthly BLS commodity index running unbroken from December 1986 to the June 2026 preliminary reading. It went 417.399 in January 2025 to 571.299 preliminary in June 2026, about 37%, and 296.3 in December 2019 to 571.299, about 93% since the last pre-pandemic month. It is not broken out by THHN versus MC versus SER, so it is a category index rather than a SKU index, but it is a direct measure of wire and cable prices and no proxy is needed.

Scrap is the volatile end of the same story: No. 1 copper scrap ran roughly 571 in mid-2025 to 785.003 preliminary in June 2026, about 37%, a bigger swing than the mill shapes series over a comparable stretch. Aluminum has been the sharper mover of the two big nonferrous metals, and AGC’s numbers say the same thing from the construction side: aluminum mill shapes +48.8% year over year and copper and brass mill shapes +26.8% in the May 2026 release.

Why this matters at the counter: your distributor’s cost on wire moves week to week, and the price you are quoted on Friday is not the price from Monday. That is a real constraint on your supplier, not a tactic. See how long a bid should stay valid when copper is moving for the estimating side of it.

Plumbing and PVF

The plumbing trim series is the best worked example on this page of why you track indexes at all. WPU1054 has sat at 453.198 from March 2026 through the June preliminary reading. Four months, no movement. If your invoice price on a trim item climbed noticeably across those same four months, the market is not the explanation and you have a specific question to ask your rep. That is the whole logic of telling price creep from a market increase.

Pipe has its own commodity series too, and you do not need the industry-level manufacturing index. WPU07210603 is plain “Plastics pipe” and WPU07210604 is “Plastics pipe fittings and unions”, both monthly from December 2005. Neither is split out by PVC versus CPVC versus PEX, so read them as the whole plastic pipe category, but they measure pipe rather than a factory’s whole output. Pipe fell through 2025, from 183.959 in January to 169.387 in December, about 8% down, then rose about 6.6% from January to the June 2026 preliminary reading. Fittings did not follow it down: they were up about 6.1% over that same first half. Plastics construction products is the broader basket, up about 4.1% over the same window. If your pipe and your fittings moved together on your invoices in 2025, that is worth a question.

HVAC and sheet metal

Equipment is the single biggest line on most HVAC jobs, and it pays to skip the broad industry index that mixes commercial refrigeration in with residential forced air. Two commodity series split the equipment story cleanly. Unitary air-conditioners went 217.389 in December 2021 to 297.025 preliminary in May 2026, about 37%, which is roughly the size of the gap between an old estimating template and reality. Heat pumps over the same window went 131.112 to 141.564 preliminary, about 8%. Same category, wildly different slopes, and the difference is exactly the sort of thing you would otherwise attribute to your supplier. One caveat on the air-conditioner series: BLS has published it only through May 2026, one month behind the rest of this page.

Ductwork has its own commodity series, WPU10730120, and it is one of the calmest numbers on this page. Sheet metal air-conditioning ducts and stove pipe went 300.699 in June 2025 to 304.143 preliminary in June 2026, about 1.1% for the year, while steel mill products rose about 17% over the identical twelve months. Fabrication and labor content damp the swing that hard. The broader sheet metal products basket, which sweeps in roofing, enclosures and everything else fabricated from coil, rose about 5% over the same twelve months, so use the duct series for duct and the broad one for context.

Steel and structural

Steel mill products rose about 14.6% in the first half of 2026 and the mills industry index rose about 16% over the same window, rising every month in between. Both are still below their late 2021 peaks: 361.439 against 449.711 for mill products is roughly 20% below, and 366.341 against 433.525 for iron and steel is roughly 15% below. Knowing that is useful in both directions. It means the current run has room, and it means anyone who lived through 2021 has seen worse.

Fabricated steel plate is the counterexample and worth watching for it: it has been flat at exactly 377.005 since July 2025 after sitting at exactly 330.753 through July 2024. Note that BLS has published it only through April 2026, two months behind the rest of this page. Not everything moves together.

Two things deliberately not on this list

Exchange copper prices. Daily copper on the futures exchanges moves before any monthly index does, and plenty of contractors watch it. We do not reproduce those values here because we have not verified a citable public source for them. If you want a daily read, go to the exchange directly rather than to a secondhand chart.

The ENR Construction Cost Index. It is a genuinely well-known index and it turns up by name in escalation clauses, which typically adjust either against an index such as CPI, PPI or the ENR Construction Cost Index, or against documented actual cost. But ENR’s index values sit behind its own publication, so we do not republish them. If a contract you are signing names the ENR CCI, get the actual published values from ENR and confirm which variant and which base year the clause means before you sign it.

The same warning applies to any index-based clause, including a PPI-based one. Name the exact series ID and base period in the clause, not just the agency. ConsensusDocs 200.1, marketed as the only standard material price escalation clause, works by naming the specific impacted materials and adjusting against an agreed objective market index in both directions. “Agreed” and “objective” do a lot of work in that sentence, and vagueness is what turns a clause into a dispute.

Other publications worth a monthly ten minutes

AGC’s construction data hub carries the weekly Data Digest, monthly PPI tables and state fact sheets. AGC also publishes the Construction Inflation Alert, written specifically to help members explain cost pressure and lead times to owners and public officials. It comes out irregularly rather than on a fixed schedule, so do not build a routine around it, but grab it when it appears: it is the single most useful thing to hand an owner who thinks you are padding.

For historical context on how big the swings get, AGC’s full-year 2025 release reported aluminum mill shapes up 30.5%, steel mill products up 17%, and copper and brass mill shapes up 11.8% December to December, while the overall materials and services index for nonresidential construction rose only 3.3%. Aggregates hide a lot. That is the argument for watching the specific series for your trade rather than the headline.

The monthly routine

• Open your four to six bookmarked series on the same day each month.
• Write down the current value and whether it carries the preliminary flag.
• Compute change versus three months ago and versus the same month last year.
• Compare those to what your own top SKUs did over the identical windows, using your invoice history, not memory.
• Flag anything where your invoice moved materially more than the index. That is a question for your rep, not an accusation.
• Reprice your estimating templates when the index move is real, using the method in how to benchmark material costs as a contractor.
• Keep the receipts. A price argument you can document is worth more than one you can only assert, which is the point of documenting material price creep and of showing up to a negotiation with your supply house with numbers.

Bookmark this page, or better, bookmark the six series that are yours and skip the rest.

Sources

• BLS PPI, inputs to nonresidential construction, goods (WPUIP2312001)
• BLS PPI, inputs to new nonresidential construction, excl. capital investment, labor and imports (WPUIP231200)
• BLS PPI, inputs to residential construction, goods (WPUIP2311001)
• BLS PPI, copper and brass mill shapes (WPU102502)
• BLS PPI, No. 1 copper scrap including wire (WPU10230101)
• BLS PPI, copper rolling, drawing, extruding and alloying (PCU331420331420)
• BLS PPI, copper wire and cable (WPU10260314)
• BLS PPI, aluminum mill shapes (WPU102501)
• BLS PPI, nonferrous mill shapes (WPU1025)
• BLS PPI, plumbing fixture fittings and trim (WPU1054)
• BLS PPI, plumbing fixture fitting and trim manufacturing (PCU332913332913)
• BLS PPI, plastics pipe (WPU07210603)
• BLS PPI, plastics pipe fittings and unions (WPU07210604)
• BLS PPI, plastics construction products (WPU072106)
• BLS PPI, unitary air-conditioners, except air source heat pumps (WPU114802)
• BLS PPI, heat pumps (WPU11480734)
• BLS PPI, sheet metal air-conditioning ducts and stove pipe (WPU10730120)
• BLS PPI, sheet metal products (WPU1073)
• BLS PPI, steel mill products (WPU1017)
• BLS PPI, iron and steel (WPU101)
• BLS PPI, iron and steel mills and ferroalloy manufacturing (PCU331110331110)
• BLS PPI, fabricated steel plate (WPU1076)
• AGC of America, May 2026 construction materials price release
• AGC of America, June 2026 construction input costs
• AGC of America, full-year 2025 producer price indexes
• AGC of America, construction data hub
• AGC of America, Construction Inflation Alert
• Procore, escalation clause reference
• ConsensusDocs 200.1, Time and Price Impacted Materials