Market Data

Steel Prices Right Now: The PPI Reads 361.44 and It Is Climbing

Forget the headlines and read the tape. The producer price index for steel mill products is the cleanest published measure of what steel is doing, and right now it is telling a specific story.

Steel price commentary is a cottage industry of anecdote, but there is a published number that settles most arguments: the producer price index for steel mill products, compiled monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It reads 361.44 index (1982=100) as of Jun 2026, up about 16.9% from a year ago, and it sits at the 75th percentile of its archived range, between a low of 98.30 in Jan 2002 and a high of 449.71 in Dec 2021. That single line does more to validate or challenge a supplier's price move than any market rumor, because it is neutral, methodical, and updated on a schedule.

Why the index leads your invoice, and by how much

Mill list prices and spot indices move first; your invoice moves later, because contracts, inventory, and service-center margins buffer the change. That lag is the useful part. When the PPI turns, it is effectively a forecast of where negotiated prices are heading over the next one to three months, which is exactly the window a buyer needs to decide whether to lock, wait, or push back on a quoted increase. A supplier raising prices while the index is climbing is either ahead of the market or telling you something specific about their own costs; either way, the index tells you which conversation to have.

PPI steel mill products, Jun 2026 (BLS): 361.44 index (1982=100). At the 75th percentile of the archived range. Up about 16.9% from a year ago.

The mill-versus-castings spread

Steel is not one market. The PPI for iron and steel castings currently reads 295.75 index (1982=100) (Jun 2026), up about 4.4% from a year ago, and the spread between mill products and castings tells you whether the pressure is in raw steel or in the foundry step that converts it. When mill products climb faster than castings, the squeeze is upstream in raw material; when castings lead, the pressure is in foundry labor and energy. Buyers who source both cast and fabricated parts can use the spread to know where to focus their negotiation, rather than treating "steel is up" as one undifferentiated problem.

The PPI will not tell you what to pay. It will tell you whether the increase in front of you is the market or just your supplier, and that is the argument worth having.

Steel's full six-year record

The 36-year record shows steel making a full round trip, which is why point-in-time comparisons mislead so badly here. Its high came at the close of 2021 around 449.71, gave way over the following years to 266.51 by the end of 2024, and has climbed since to 361.44. That leaves it 20% below the peak and well off the floor, so whether today looks high or low depends entirely on which year you anchored to.

Feed your annual steel tonnage and this benchmark into the metal price sensitivity calculator to see what the current trend does to your spend. Price the move

Published 2026-08-05.