The Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders report shows factory new orders plunged -5.2% for August 2012. This Census statistical release is called Factory Orders by the press and covers both durable and non-durable manufacturing orders, shipments and inventories. This is the largest monthly drop since January 2009, although July showed a 2.6% increase.
The Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report, G.17, shows zero change in industrial production for February 2012, but January was revised up, from 0% to 0.4%. Autos has some bad news, the auto & parts index dropped, -1.1% for February, but this is after autos had a meteoric soar of +8.6% in January. This report is also known as output for factories and mines.
The Federal Reserve's Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report, G.17, shows zero change in industrial production for January 2012. The culprit was utilities and the Fed blames the weather. Warming temperatures in winter cause home energy production to drop beyond their typical output levels. The big fat industrial production zero hides some very promising changes.
The May 2011 ISM Manufacturing Survey has some bad news. PMI plunged -6.9 percent points to 53.5%, from 60.4% in April. This is the lowest PMI since September 2009. PMI dropped 11.4% by percentages and this is worse than October 2008.
The April 2011 ISM Manufacturing Survey was released April 1st. PMI dropped 0.8 percent points to 60.4%, from 61.2% in March. This is the 4th month for the manufacturing index to be above 60%. The employment index is at it's highest point in 38 years for the first 4 months of 2011.
The March 2011 ISM Manufacturing Survey was released April 1st. PMI dropped slightly to 61.2%, from a strong 61.4% in February, when the factory index and it's highest level since May 2004. This is the 3rd month for the manufacturing index to be above 60%.
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