Industrial Production Misses, Capacity Utilization Declines For First Time Since April 2011

The Schrodinger economy continues to chug along, with another economic data point miss to follow the blistering beats of the various regional Fed indices: Industrial production [2]was unchanged in February after having risen 0.4 percent in January. Expectations were for a 0.4% increase relative to the pre-revision 0.0% change. Instead we got a slow down in expansion. From the Fed: "Previously, industrial production was reported to have been unchanged in January. Manufacturing output moved up 0.3 percent in February. Within manufacturing, the index for motor vehicles and parts fell 1.1 percent after jumping 8.6 percent in January, but the index for manufacturing excluding motor vehicles and parts increased 0.4 percent in February. Production at mines fell 1.2 percent, while the output of utilities was unchanged. At 96.2 percent of its 2007 average, total industrial production for February was 4.0 percent above its year-earlier level." In other words, instead of growing in February as previously expected, the economy will now have grown in January. Also Capacity utilization for total industry edged down to 78.7 percent, a rate 1.2 percentage points above its level from a year earlier but 1.6 percentage points below its long-run (1972--2011) average. This was the first decline in utilization since April 2011.

Industrial Production - trending lower.

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