The U.S. producer price index was flat in July, falling inside a range of historical Wall Street Journal forecasts for the indicator.

Excluding food and energy, July prices rose 0.2% from June, a reading that was inside a range of historical forecasts for the indicator.

For select economic indicators, including PPI, Dow Jones Newswires measures whether a reported statistic falls outside a historical range of WSJ forecasting, and if so, by how much. Those forecast ranges are based on an archive of surveys of economists the Journal has conducted over the past decade.

The range provides a way to measure the relative volatility of any one particular indicator, compared not just with a contemporary forecast in the days ahead of an indicator's release, but also compared with its track record of surprising forecasters over time.

In the case of July's PPI, the range of WSJ forecasts relative to the actual reported number over that period was -0.2 percentage point to +0.3 percentage point. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal were expecting the indicator to be higher.

For July's PPI excluding food and energy, the range of WSJ forecasts relative to the actual reported number over that period was -0.2 percentage point to +0.2 percentage point. The 0.2% increase was 0.1 percentage point lower than economists' forecast of a 0.3% increase.

The ranges are made up of the median of historical forecasts that came in lower than the reported number and the median of forecasts that came in higher.

Economists typically watch the PPI numbers closely because some of the underlying data is used in calculating the personal-consumption expenditures price index, the inflation metric that the Federal Reserve uses to gauge progress against its 2% inflation target.