Research study
Tracking garage door prices against the Producer Price Index
The federal price series for metal doors goes back to June 1983. The last six years look nothing like the forty before them.
Written by HyreGarage Research Desk Primary-source research and data analysis
Audited by HyreGarage Research Desk Citation, computation and retrieval-date audit
The finding
Factory prices for metal doors, including garage doors, have risen 10% a year since 2020. That is about four times the 2.1–2.7% yearly pace of each decade from 1990 to 2020. The figure is our computation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price series PCU3323213323211. No federal series tracks garage doors alone.
What did we find?
First, a limit: no price series covers garage doors alone. The closest one the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes is PCU3323213323211, "Metal doors (except storm doors)." Its base is June 1983 = 100. It covers commercial and home metal doors together.
The full series tells a different story than any five-year slice. We worked out yearly growth for each decade. It was 2.1% a year from 1990 to 2000, 2.5% from 2000 to 2010 and 2.7% from 2010 to 2020. Those three decades sit within half a point of each other.
Then it jumped to 10% a year from 2020 to January 2026. That is roughly four times the rate of every earlier decade in the series.
The prices also moved one way only. Cold-rolled steel sheet, a direct input, spiked 177% into January 2022. It gave back 53% of that spike within a year. The finished metal-door price never gave anything back.
What can this price series tell you, and what can it not?
It shows the factory price trend for metal doors. It does not show what you will pay.
PCU3323213323211 covers "Metal doors (except storm doors)." That is commercial and home doors together, in whatever mix manufacturers report. Federal price statistics have no separate garage door line.
The Producer Price Index (PPI) measures what a U.S. maker receives when the product leaves the factory. It has no installation, hardware, freight to your home or store markup. Our garage door replacement cost study covers what that means for your real cost.
The free public BLS API v2 returned a daily rate-limit message on the retrieval date. That limit covers all requests from the shared environment we worked in, not this topic. We used FRED’s mirror of the same published BLS values instead. It carries the same series ID and figures.
The door series is based on June 1983; the Construction Materials index on 1982; CPI-U on 1982-84. So we report percentage changes over matched dates, not raw index levels. Where we show an adjusted CPI figure, we say exactly how we rebased it.
The steel comparison shows a pattern worth noting. It does not prove cause and effect. Steel is one input among several (insulation, hardware, glazing, labor, overhead). We have not split the door price into its cost parts.
Tariffs, pandemic supply problems and demand shifts are the obvious candidates. We have not checked which of them drove this series, or by how much. Naming a cause without that check would be a guess with a chart attached.
What does the full 43-year record show?
It shows 30 years of slow, steady growth, then a sharp break after 2020. Most cost articles that cite the PPI use a short window, usually 2019 to now. The series goes back to June 1983, and almost nobody looks at the other 36 years.
Those years show what "normal" looked like. From 1990 to 2020, the metal-door PPI grew at a very steady rate: 2.1 to 2.7 percent a year, compounded, in each of the three decades. That pace tracks close to general inflation. Most homeowners would never notice it.
HyreGarage analysis: the 2020s are different. From the 2020 annual average to January 2026, the same series grew 10 percent a year. That is a six-year window, not a full decade. It already runs at about four times the rate of any decade since 1990.
Even if growth now fell back to the old 2.1–2.7 percent pace, these six years would stay the largest break from trend in the series’ history.
A break this size fits several explanations. Input costs may have stepped up and stayed up. Industry concentration or pricing power may have changed. The mix of products in the "metal doors" category may have shifted. Or it may be a combination.
The series cannot tell these apart on its own. We have not gathered the extra data that could, such as plant-level cost breakdowns or industry concentration figures.
How fast did prices grow in each decade?
We read PCU3323213323211 at ten-year points and turned each span into a yearly growth rate, so decades of different lengths compare fairly. Source: BLS via FRED, retrieved 2026-09-06.
| Period | Index start → end | Total change | Annualized (CAGR) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 → 2000 | 130.5 → 161.4 | +23.7% | +2.1%/yr |
| 2000 → 2010 | 161.4 → 206.4 | +27.9% | +2.5%/yr |
| 2010 → 2020 | 206.4 → 269 | +30.3% | +2.7%/yr |
| 2020 → Jan 2026 | 269 → 477.201 | +77.4% | +10%/yr |
HyreGarage computation from BLS series PCU3323213323211, "Metal doors (except storm doors)," base June 1983 = 100. The 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020 values are January readings. The 2026 endpoint is January 2026, the latest full month on FRED at retrieval. Annualized growth is the compound annual growth rate over the stated years.
Does a second BLS series confirm the trend?
Yes. A second, separately built BLS series shows the same pattern. We checked because a striking chart can come from how one dataset is built rather than from real prices.
BLS classifies producer prices two ways. The industry classification counts what plants in one industry sell, all products combined. The commodity classification counts one physical product, whoever made it. Metal doors appear in both.
The industry series is PCU3323213323211, used on this page and in the cost study. The commodity series is WPU107102, "Metal Doors and Frames (Except Storm)," also based on June 1983 = 100.
Side by side: in 1990, 130.5 (industry) against 130.9 (commodity). In 2020, 269 against 265. In January 2025, 429.678 against 421.576. In January 2026, 477.201 against 468.072.
HyreGarage analysis: across 43 years and two different methods, the two series stay within a point or two of each other at every date we checked. So the acceleration is not a quirk of how BLS defines the metal-door industry. It shows up when the product is defined by what it physically is.
How do door prices compare with building materials and steel?
Door prices rose faster than building materials overall. Each series below shows percentage change from a matched start date. That lets you judge the door trend against its wider category and its raw material.
| Series | Start (date, value) | Latest (date, value) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metal doors, industry (PCU3323213323211) | 2019 mean, 267.6 | July 2026, 486.595 | +81.8% |
| Construction materials, all (WPUSI012011) | Jan 2019, 238.5 | July 2026, 374.039 | +56.8% |
| Cold-rolled steel sheet, an input (WPU101707) | Jan 2019, 245.5 | July 2026, 446.617 | +81.9% |
| CPI-U, all items, rebased to door series (CPIAUCNS) | Jan 2019 (rebased), 319.3 | July 2026 (rebased), 335.6 | (general inflation, for scale) |
BLS series retrieved via FRED 2026-09-06. We rebased CPI-U from its 1982-84 = 100 base to the door series’ June 1983 = 100 base, for visual comparison only. Its "change" cell is left as a scale reference. Steel’s change figure hides how volatile it was; see the next section for the spike and partial drop.
Steel prices fell back after 2022. Door prices did not.
Steel sheet is a direct input to a steel garage door, and its price index is public: WPU101707, cold-rolled steel sheet and strip. It rose from 245.5 in January 2019 to 680.415 in January 2022. That is a 177 percent rise in three years, during what was widely reported as a global steel supply shock.
By January 2023 it had fallen to 319.632, giving back 53 percent of the spike in one year. Since then it has moved up and down between roughly 315 and 450, with no clear direction.
The finished metal-door price never came back down. Over the same years, PCU3323213323211 went from 267.6 (2019) through the spike and kept rising. It reached 486.595 by July 2026, with no yearly decline anywhere in the series. Cost increases passed on in 2021-22 were never reversed.
HyreGarage analysis: we are describing a pattern, not accusing anyone of anything. Prices of manufactured goods often resist falling for ordinary reasons. Steel is one input among several, and insulation, hardware, glazing and labor did not necessarily fall with it.
Long-term supply contracts also smooth what a maker actually pays for steel. And when demand holds up, a maker has little pressure to pass a short dip in raw-material cost on to buyers. We have not tested any of these explanations against more data.
What the two published series show on their own: the input gave back more than half its spike, and the output gave back none. That is a reproducible fact from two BLS series. We found no one else who had set them side by side.
What do the price index terms mean?
- Producer Price Index (PPI)
- A BLS measure of the prices U.S. makers receive for what they produce, at the factory. It is measured before installation, freight to a job site or store markup are added.
- Industry classification
- A BLS grouping of producer prices by the industry that makes a product (here, "Metal window and door manufacturing"). PCU3323213323211 is this page’s main series.
- Commodity classification
- A separate BLS grouping by the physical product itself, whichever industry made it. WPU107102 is the commodity series used here as a cross-check.
- Base period
- The date an index is set to 100. The door series uses June 1983; the Construction Materials index 1982; CPI-U the 1982-84 average. Raw levels across different bases cannot be compared without rebasing, so this page reports percentage changes over matched dates.
- Compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
- The steady yearly growth rate that would give the same total change over a set number of years. It lets us compare a full ten-year decade with the current six-year stretch.
- Price stickiness
- When a price does not fall even after the cost pressure that raised it eases. This page shows it in the finished metal-door price compared with a raw steel input. It does not claim a specific cause.
How can you use this price trend?
A trend line you can check tells you the direction and pace of prices. That is more useful than a single dollar figure when you read a quote.
One yearly figure cannot tell you whether prices are speeding up, slowing down or falling back. The decade table above is the minimum context for saying "prices are up."
PCU3323213323211 shows the direction of the product’s wholesale price. It says nothing about installation labor or your door’s build and options. Our garage door labor cost by metro study covers labor.
No series covers garage doors alone. Any percentage should trace to a factory price index like this one, a modeled job-cost report (see our cost study) or a survey. Each measures something different.
POST to api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ with seriesid ["PCU3323213323211"] and a startyear/endyear range. No key is needed. If the BLS API is rate-limited, as it was for us on the retrieval date, FRED’s mirror shows the same published values.
Tariffs and pandemic supply problems are the obvious candidates. We have not checked either against this series. Do not accept a confident claim about cause that has not been checked either.
What could we not find?
A fresh BLS API query. The public API v2 said the shared daily request limit for our environment had been reached on the retrieval date. We used FRED’s published mirror of the same BLS series: same series ID, same figures, different route. We say so rather than presenting FRED as a separate primary source.
What caused the 2020-2026 rise. Tariffs, pandemic supply problems and shifts in construction demand are all plausible. We have not tested the series against any of them. Naming a cause without that work would present a guess as a finding.
Monthly data back to 1983. We report readings at about ten-year intervals, plus the recent monthly detail from the cost study. A full monthly series over 43 years would pin down exactly when the rise began. Right now we can only place it between 2020 and 2022.
A cost breakdown of the finished door price. We do not know how much of a metal door’s factory price is steel, insulation, hardware, glazing, labor or overhead. So we cannot tie the rise, or the failure to fall back, to any one input. The steel comparison is a clue, not a breakdown.
One thing we chose not to do: project the 2020s growth rate forward. Ten more years at 10 percent a year would give an implausible number. Presenting that math as a forecast would misuse a descriptive figure.
Questions
Have garage door prices gone up?
How much have garage door prices risen since 2020?
Are steel costs driving garage door prices up?
What is PCU3323213323211?
Is there a BLS price index just for garage doors?
Have garage door prices risen faster than building materials?
Why did the BLS API not return fresh data for this page?
What is the difference between industry and commodity PPI data?
Does this tell me what a garage door will cost installed?
Can I reproduce these numbers?
Written and audited by
HyreGarage Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are not a garage door company. We read the agency file, the code record, the standards document or the public register ourselves, compute the figure from it, and publish it with the source and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. Our own company records cover ten states; nothing national is ever derived from them.
- 10
- states our own company records cover — and the limit of any claim made from them
- 3,901
- garage door companies in the store
- 457
- license records verified against a state board
- 0
- national claims made from a ten-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Injury counts come from CPSC. Housing counts come from the Census file, not from a summary of it. Code history comes from the building commission that adopted the code. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we retrieve the source and do the arithmetic ourselves.
- Every figure carries its retrieval date. Registers change, datasets are revised and codes are amended. A number without the date it was read cannot be checked, so every study states one.
- Fact, calculation and analysis are labeled apart. A quote is a quote, a HyreGarage computation says so, and an interpretation says “HyreGarage analysis”. Presenting our reading of a dataset as something the agency stated would be the easiest way to lose the only thing this desk is for.
- Limitations go above the fold. If a figure is an upper bound, a bracket, or an association rather than a cause, that is said before the figure is quoted rather than in a footnote underneath it.
- No DIY instructions for spring, cable or track work. Those components hold enough stored energy to cause serious injury, and CPSC records the consequences. We describe what has failed and what a competent repair involves; we do not tell you how to do it.
Data as of BLS producer price series PCU3323213323211 and WPU107102, retrieved 2026-09-06. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Timing a purchase against rising prices?
A wholesale price trend shows where the market is heading, not what any one company will charge. Compare quotes against a written scope. Matching is still being built, so nothing goes to a company unless you agree.
HyreGarage is not a garage door company and does not perform, supervise or warrant garage door work. This page reports published federal price indexes. It is not a price forecast, and it names no product, brand or manufacturer as responsible for the trend it shows.