Market Wire

81% of Factory Inputs Are Now Rising Year on Year

81 of every 100 series in the 16-input basket sat above their year-ago level in May 2026, up from 75 a quarter earlier. Breadth is the part a headline average hides: a broad rise is far harder to negotiate away than a…

81 of every 100 series in the 16-input basket sat above their year-ago level in May 2026, up from 75 a quarter earlier. Breadth is the part a headline average hides: a broad rise is far harder to negotiate away than a narrow one, because there is no substitute input sitting still.

• rising year over year (of 100): 81
• rising month over month: 94
• series in the basket: 16

For scale: the diffusion index peaked at 100 in March 2022 — the post-pandemic inflation at its widest — and bottomed at 31 in November 2023. The month-over-month reading stands at 94, so the breadth is not an artifact of a single base month.

The practical read for a buyer: when four of five inputs are rising at once, escalation clauses and dual-sourcing do more work than negotiation, because the leverage a flat substitute normally provides does not exist. The basket's members and each one's year-over-year direction are listed on the cost-data board.

Published 2026-08-11.