Unless and until the war tells us otherwise, inflation is our through line this week.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizzdahl.

It is Monday, today, 6 April, good as it always is.

Have you along, everybody.

As we sit here to start the week, news of the war and its economic ripples is calm.

Threats, of course, bluster, but nothing tangible yet.

So we are going to stick with what we know. And what we know so far is that inflation is going to be a key

economic talking point the next four days. Gas prices, yes, oil up a bit again today. Two key price measures coming in

the next couple of days, the personal consumption expenditures price index, PCE in the vernacular,

and then the consumer price index on Friday. But we start today with one of those economic

ripples, the Institute for Supply Management's Purchasing Managers Index.

It's the prices businesses pay, services sector businesses in particular, the prices they are

paying for what they need, those prices shot up 7.7 percentage points in March.

That is the biggest monthly increase since 2012.

Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman starts us off.

Today's report on the service industry followed another one last week covering manufacturing.

Dan North at Credit Insurer Allianz Trade says these private sector ISM reports are really important for gauging inflationary pressures in near real time.

It is the most up-to-date data.

The government data, such as CPI, is at least a month behind.

And what does the ISM data show?

The prices have gone up pretty sharply, especially in manufacturing, up 19% in two months.

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