Despite hope-filled ‘soft’ survey data suggesting US manufacturing’s rebound, the ‘hard’ data shows anything but.
September saw a 1.3% MoM plunge in US Industrial Production (dramatically worse than the 0.1% MoM increase expected) and making matters worse, August was revised down from a 0.4% MoM rise to a 0.1% MoM drop…
Source: Bloomberg
This was the biggest monthly drop since February as The Fed suggests that this reflects ongoing production challenges following Hurricane Ida, which contributed 0.3 percentage point to the drop in manufacturing.
The report showed production of motor vehicles fell 7.2% last month, the sharpest drop since April, after a 3.2% decrease in August, reflecting a global shortage of semiconductors.
Capacity Utilization rolled over after briefly reaching pre-COVID levels…
US Manufacturing output tumbled 0.7% MoM (also worse than the +0.1% MoM expected)…
Source: Bloomberg
This is the sixth straight month of basically flatline US manufacturing production.
