Durable Goods Flat for August

The manufacturing recession isn’t quite over. Today, the Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods in August were the same as in July. At least that was better than expectations. Wall Street had been expecting a drop of 1.5%.

Durable goods are a key component for the U.S. economy. The problem recently for durable goods has been an energy sector that’s been squeezed by lower oil prices.

Looking at the details, we see that orders excluding transportation fell by 0.4%.

One bright spot is that orders for non-military capital goods excluding aircraft rose by 0.6% last month. That category is a decent proxy for business spending.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on September 28th, 2016 at 11:39 am

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