US factories are humming along, constrained only by supply issues which might occasionally limit production. That’s the story, anyway. There’s too much business because of them, manufacturers taking in only more orders by the day leaving them struggling to catch up.But what kind of stuff is it that is being ordered from our nation’s factories?Without thinking too much about it, [...]
Over here, on the other side of that ocean, the US economy can only dream of the low levels Chinese industry has been putting up this late into 2020. At least those in the East are back positive year-over-year. Here in America, manufacturing and industry can’t even manage anything like a plus sign.Summer slowdown extends in Industrial Production. According to [...]
US Industrial Productions continues to more and more resemble the worst of the Euro$ #3, that “manufacturing recession” of four years ago. Back at the end of 2014 and lasting well into 2016, IP was led lower by the oil crash among other problems. They called it a supply glut but we all know that wasn’t ever the case. What [...]
There’s always weakness even in the most booming of economies. Even in the real booms, not the 2017 hysteria kind, not all cylinders will be firing. What makes them real, however, is when the vast majority are. The concept behind globally synchronized growth was a valid one, it just never came out in practice. The impression has been incorporated into [...]
Whether or not a full-scale recession shows up in the US is an open question. There’s less of one in US industry. The “manufacturing recession” we last saw of Euro$ #3 is becoming clearer as a repeat property in Euro$ #4. According to the Federal Reserve, May was a relatively good month for industry – total output didn’t decline from [...]
The Federal Reserve has been maintaining statistics on American industry for nearly as long as there has been a Federal Reserve. The first entry in the data series on Industrial Production is for the month of January ’19. Not 2019 but 1919. With over a hundred years of relatively consistent data, matching up very well with overall trends in the [...]
The calendar last month hadn’t yet run out on US Industrial Production as it had for US Retail Sales. The hurricane interruption of 2017 for industry unlike consumer spending extended into last September. Therefore, the base comparison for 2018 is against that artificial low. As such, US IP rose by 5.1% year-over-year last month. That’s the largest gain since 2010. [...]
US Industrial Production dipped in May 2018. It was the first monthly drop since January. Year-over-year, IP was up just 3.5% from May 2017, down from 3.6% in each of prior three months. The reason for the soft spot was that American industry is being pulled in different directions by the two most important sectors: crude oil and autos. In [...]
In February 2018, it was like old times for the US industrial sectors. Prior to the 2015-16 downturn, the otherwise moribund economy did produce two genuine booms. The first in the auto sector, the other in energy. Without them, who knows what the no-recovery recovery would have looked like. They were for the longest time the only bright spots. The [...]
Industrial Production in the US was up 3.6% year-over-year in December 2017. That’s the best for American industry since November 2014 when annual IP growth was 3.7%. That’s ultimately the problem, though, given all that has happened this year. In other words, despite a clear boost the past few months from storm effects, as well as huge contributions from the [...]
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