Durable Goods orders dropped 2.5% for June 2009 according to the Commerce Department press release.
New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $4.1 billion or 2.5 percent to $158.6 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease followed two consecutive monthly increases including a 1.3 percent May increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 1.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.7 percent.
Shipments
Shipments of manufactured durable goods in June, down eleven consecutive months, decreased $0.3 billion or 0.2 percent to $168.3 billion. This was the longest streak of consecutive monthly decreases since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992 and followed a 2.6 percent May decrease.
Unfilled Orders
Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in June, down nine consecutive months, decreased $6.6 billion or 0.9 percent to $740.1 billion. This followed a 0.3 percent May decrease.
Inventories
Inventories of manufactured durable goods in June, down six consecutive months, decreased $3.0 billion or 0.9 percent to $318.8 billion. This followed a 1.1 percent May decrease.
Capital Goods Industries
Nondefense
Nondefense new orders for capital goods in June decreased $1.8 billion or 3.4 percent to $51.3 billion.
Defense
Defense new orders for capital goods in June decreased $3.4 billion or 28.3 percent to $8.6 billion.
We noted some truck tonnage drop earlier and as one can see, shipping is on the worst slide since they started tracking shipments.
Some good news is inventories are still declining. (Gotta sell what you've got before you can make more). In the details large transportation goods like airplanes dropped but check out the defense new orders.
more on durable goods
click image to enlarge
The above graphic is from the New York Times article by Floyd Norris, Why a Recovery May Still Feel Like a Recession.
He zeroes in on durable goods, (the above metric, EI) and notes it's weapons production keeping the numbers from being worse.
But, one thing I think he misses, most DoD type contracts, which weapons are part of, one needs to have U.S. citizenship to work there quite often, for national security reasons....
So, in other words, it's one of the last areas that has been less offshore outsourced.