The 1.3% increase compared to December is the most marked for goods since May 2021, the statement specifies.An employee of the Home Depot company cleans washing machines for sale.WASHINGTON- Wholesale prices in the United States increased in January compared to December, although there was a slowdown in the year-over-year comparison for the first time since April 2020.The producer price index (PPI) increased 1% in January compared to December, according to data released Tuesday by the Department of Labor.It is its biggest increase since May 2021, and double what analysts expected.The rise registered last December was 0.4% for one month, according to downwardly revised data.The increase is more marked for goods than for services (+1.3% against +0.7%), the statement specifies.In 12 months, the increase was 9.7%, against 9.8% in December and November, which marked a record since these data began to be recorded in 2010.This slowdown is the first since April 2020, when, under the effects of the confinement measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the evolution of prices had slowed down."The combination of these persistent supply shocks and high energy costs will prevent producer prices from returning to more normal trends before the end of the year," Mahir Rasheed and Kathy Bostjancic, economists at Oxford Economics, said in a note.The producer price index (PPI) is a measure that takes into account prices from the point of view of manufacturers and wholesalers.The consumer price index (CPI, in English) measures prices to final consumers and reached 7.5% in January in 12 months, its fastest pace in nearly 40 years.The monthly "Empire State" indicator, which measures manufacturing activity in the New York region, published on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve (US Central Bank, Fed), showed that the index that measures the prices paid to suppliers "remains close to its recent peak" while the one that measures the prices paid by customers "reached a new record".Copyright Diario las Americas.All rights reserved