Pepper & spices: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Spice prices depend on harvests in a few countries, such as India for chilli, cumin and turmeric, Vietnam for pepper and Guatemala for cardamom. Weather, stock holding and speculation cause large swings. The series is a US spice and salt index proxy.
Proxy US producer price index: salt, pepper and other spices index, BLS base period · monthly, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for pepper & spices itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkPepper & spices and Flavours and fragrances
Monthly changes -0.01 little or none correlation 12-month changes -0.17 little or none correlation Last 5 years -0.39 monthly changes Lead or lag none No clear lead or lag Price function, Jan 2006 to Sep 2026 Pepper & spices ≈ 18.9 × (Flavours and fragrances)0.46 R² 0.85 On this fit, a 10% higher flavours and fragrances price goes with a 4.5% higher pepper & spices price over the long run. Units: index, BLS base period and index (BLS base period =100).Chart: Pepper & spices and Flavours and fragrances prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jan 2006, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Pepper & spices price against Flavours and fragrances price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2006), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Spice oils and oleoresins, extracted from pepper, chilli and turmeric, are ingredients in the flavour industry, and India is a large maker. The flavours index does not follow the spice proxy: monthly moves correlate at minus 0.01 and yearly moves at minus 0.17.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsThe spice proxy is a US index that also covers table salt, so it shares a component with the salt series. Even so, monthly moves correlate at minus 0.14, showing the two products are priced separately.
little or none co-movement month to month · 162 months Show chartsSpice extracts are often made with pressurised carbon dioxide, a clean solvent. CO2 is a modest processing cost, and the data shows little link: monthly moves correlate at 0.03 and yearly moves at 0.21.
little or none co-movement month to month · 248 months Show chartsMost spices are shipped in containers from Asia to Europe and America, so freight rates affect landed costs. The freight proxy is a deep sea index, and monthly moves correlate at minus 0.08 and yearly moves at 0.13.
little or none co-movement month to month · 249 months Show chartsHow to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.