January Industrial Production Falls 0.1%

Industrial production fell by 0.1% in January. Economists were expecting an increase of 0.2%.

Output last month was pushed down by a 0.4 percent drop in manufacturing production, which reflected a 3.2 percent decline in motor vehicle assembly. Manufacturing output had increased 1.1 percent in December.

Production at the nation’s mines fell 1 percent.

With industrial output weak, the amount of capacity in use fell to 79.1 percent from 79.3 percent in December.

Industrial capacity utilization — a measure of how fully firms are using their resources — was 1.1 percentage points below its long-run average.

Officials at the Fed tend to look at utilization measures as a signal of how much “slack” remains in the economy, and how much room growth has to run before it becomes inflationary.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on February 15th, 2013 at 11:09 am

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