After a period of significant increases, the growth in the prices of building materials has slowed according to June Producer Price data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Year-over-year growth in gypsum prices slowed by 3.7 percentage points to 15.6 percent. Annual softwood lumber price growth decelerated by 8.7 percentage points to 8.0 percent. And Oriented Strand Board (OSB) prices grew by 37.0 percent year-over-year in June, still high, but 24.8 percentage points less than the year-over-year growth recorded in May.
The slowing of the growth of building material prices is good news for builders and bears watching for the rest of 2013.
For the economy as a whole, producer prices for finished goods rose by 0.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis in June, the second consecutive month of growth.
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