Material Price Index
What the materials in your trade actually did over the last three, six and twelve months. Built entirely from free federal price data, so you can check every number yourself. No customer invoice is used anywhere on this page.
Current through Jul 2026. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index.
Electrical
Wire is the volatile line. Conduit is not, and the gap between them is the whole story.
| Material | 3 mo | 6 mo | 12 mo | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper wire and cableWPU10260314 | +8.3% | +8.9% | +17.9% | Jul 2026 |
| Electrical conduit and fittingsWPU11710216 | +6.8% | +7.9% | +6.6% | Jul 2026 |
| Copper and brass mill shapesWPU102502 | +1.4% | +5.1% | +18.4% | Jul 2026 |
- Copper wire and cable (WPU10260314)
- Electrical conduit and fittings (WPU11710216)
Plumbing
Pipe and fittings move separately and have diverged sharply. Quoting one off the other is how estimates drift.
| Material | 3 mo | 6 mo | 12 mo | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plastics pipeWPU07210603 | +6.2% | +6.6% | +3.7% | Jul 2026 |
| Plastics pipe fittings and unionsWPU07210604 | +4.6% | +6.0% | +7.3% | Jul 2026 |
| Plumbing fixture fittings and trimWPU1054 | 0.0% | +0.4% | +5.1% | Jul 2026 |
| Domestic water heatersWPU106601 | 0.0% | +0.1% | +0.7% | May 2026 |
- Plastics pipe (WPU07210603)
- Plastics pipe fittings and unions (WPU07210604)
- Plumbing fixture fittings and trim (WPU1054)
HVAC
Unitary air conditioners and heat pumps are moving in opposite directions. Blending them hides the move that matters.
| Material | 3 mo | 6 mo | 12 mo | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unitary air conditionersWPU114802 | +0.1% | +5.1% | +2.9% | Jul 2026 |
| Heat pumpsWPU11480734 | 0.0% | -3.6% | -3.3% | Jul 2026 |
| Sheet metal ducts and stove pipeWPU10730120 | +1.4% | +2.2% | +2.1% | Jul 2026 |
| Steel mill productsWPU1017 | +9.6% | +18.7% | +22.5% | Jul 2026 |
- Unitary air conditioners (WPU114802)
- Heat pumps (WPU11480734)
- Sheet metal ducts and stove pipe (WPU10730120)
How to read this, and how not to
These are producer price indexes: what manufacturers charged at the factory gate, averaged nationally. They are not counter prices, and they are not your prices. Nobody publishes your prices.
That gap is the point. If plastics pipe rose 6% and your PVC line rose 15%, the difference is not the market. It is your account, and it is worth a conversation with a number attached. If your line rose 6% too, your branch passed through roughly what everyone else did, and the argument is with your estimating assumptions instead.
Three limits worth knowing. BLS marks recent months preliminary and revises them. Some series publish a month behind others, which is why every row carries its own date rather than one shared date. And no series breaks out product variants: there is no PVC versus CPVC versus PEX split, and no THHN versus MC versus NM-B split, so a category index will never match one SKU exactly.
Every series above links to its BLS page. Nothing here is proprietary and nothing requires taking our word for it.
For the analysis behind these numbers, see our research.