The origins of the producer price index and consumer price index, unlike their release dates, are widely separated in time. They were created not only at different times but to serve different purposes, and so each index evolved quite differently.

In the late nineteenth century, the U.S. Senate authorized the Bureau of Labor Statistics to start collecting and reporting wholesale prices, so that the Senate could assess the economic effects of tariff laws. The first wholesale price index (WPI), the index’s official name for nearly eight decades, was published in 1902. It was an unweighted index of about 250 commodity prices, covering the period from 1890 through 1901. A weighting scheme was adopted in 1914; it was later refined in 1952 and 1967.