industrial production

Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization for February 2010

Snow, snow, look at the snow. This is a line from a pre-school first reader book and the last economic indicator reports are quite similar. All of a sudden everything is blamed on the weather, in a repetitive, rhyming pattern.

The Federal Reserve has released Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization for February 2010. Graph-o-rama below.

Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization for January 2010

January 2010 Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization was released today. We have a solid gain of 0.9% for the month and the year to year also have a 0.9% gain.

Industrial production increased 0.9 percent in January following a gain of 0.7 percent in December. Manufacturing production rose 1.0 percent in January, with increases for most of its major components, while the indexes for both utilities and mining advanced 0.7 percent. At 101.1 percent of its 2002 average, output in January was 0.9 percent above its year-earlier level. The capacity utilization rate for total industry rose 0.7 percentage point to 72.6 percent, a rate 8.0 percentage points below its average from 1972 to 2009.

Of the major groups, even construction had a positive gain of 1%, but down -5.3% for the year.

To put this is context, here is a graph of industrial production from right before the start of this recession.

Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization for November 2009

Industrial Production has increased 0.8% from last month. Manufacturing increased 1.1% with gains in both durables and non-durable goods. This is good news. Mines (think about the price of commodities recently), increased 2.1% from last month. Utilities decreased -1.8%, blamed on mild temperatures.

Here is the graph of industrial production since the official start of this recession, the index is now at 2002 levels:

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