Market Data

Iron and Steel PPI, Charted: How 357.11 Ranks Against the Full Archive

An original look through the archived BLS history of the iron and steel index, the highs, the lows, and where the current 357.11 reading falls.

At 357.11 as of May 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' PPI for iron and steel sits 100% of the way up its archived range, 16.0% above the archived low of 307.94 set in Nov 2025, and 0.0% below the archived high of 357.11 from May 2026. The trend is rising, and the index is up about 7.0% from a year ago. Here is what the distribution says about how elevated today's number really is.

The shape of the archive

Two features of the history matter for anyone benchmarking against it. First, the range is wide: from trough to peak, the archived window spans 16.0%, steel is a cyclical commodity dressed up as an index, and it moves like one. The low of 307.94 in Nov 2025 and the high of 357.11 in May 2026 are not statistical curiosities; they were both prices that real buyers paid, within the span this archive covers. Second, the index does not mean-revert to a comfortable middle on any schedule. It regime-shifts: long stretches near one end of the range, punctuated by fast transitions. The 2021 supply shock is the canonical example, a repricing that reset the entire post-pandemic level structure rather than a spike that fully round-tripped.

How to use a percentile, not just a price

The 100% range position is the single most useful number for a negotiator. Near the top of the range, mill margins over their cost floor are historically fat, and history says the two exits are capacity additions and demand rollover, both of which favor patient buyers on long-dated commitments. Near the bottom, discounts are already in the price, mills are quoting close to cost, and the asymmetry flips: there is more room above than below. Neither reading is a forecast, but each sets the odds you are accepting when you fix a price. Benchmarking a supplier quote against the current level, the year-over-year drift of +7.0%, and the range position turns a take-it-or-leave-it number into a negotiation.

PPI, iron and steel, May 2026: 357.11. Archived low 307.94 (Nov 2025); archived high 357.11 (May 2026); current reading 100% of the way up that range.

The index does not mean-revert on a schedule. It regime-shifts, long stretches at one end of the range, punctuated by fast transitions.

The range, translated into dollars

Scale makes the history concrete. A buyer with a $1,000,000 annual steel spend, priced off today's 357.11 reading, is paying about $159,652 more per year than the same volume would have cost at the archived low of 307.94 in Nov 2025, assuming purchased prices track the index one for one. That is the money the cycle gives and takes across a full swing, and it dwarfs most of what negotiation alone recovers. The lesson of the chart is not that today's level is right or wrong; it is that timing the cycle is a bigger lever than squeezing the quote.

Use the steel coil cost calculator to translate an index-level view into the per-pound and per-blank numbers your quotes are built on. Benchmark your coil buy

Published 2026-07-13.