Industrial Production Reaches 4-1/2 Year High

We had some important economic reports today. Let’s run down a few highlights:

The government said that consumer inflation was unchanged in December. The “core rate,” which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose by 0.1%. This exactly matched consensus. For all of 2012, inflation rose by 1.7% while the core rate was up by 1.9%.

The Federal Reserve said that industrial production rose by 0.3% in December. That follows a 1% rise in November which was largely a post-Sandy rebound. Industrial production is now at its highest level since June 2008, and we’re not too far from the all-time high reached in December 2007. Capacity utilization is up to 78.8%.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau reported that retail sales rose 0.5% in December on a seasonally-adjusted basis. Sales were up 4.7% from a year ago. Bill McBride of Calculated Risk notes that retail sales are up 25.4% from the bottom of the recession, and are up 9.7% since the pre-recession peak.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 16th, 2013 at 1:57 pm

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