The headlines say seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) was up. The manufacturing segment of industrial production improved.

Analyst Opinion of Industrial Production

The market expected improvement this month in industrial production. Our analysis shows this month was significantly weaker than last month BUT the best way to view this is the 3 month rolling averages which was unchanged and remains in expansion.

HOWEVER, there was significant downward revision in the data – and your view of this months data depends on where you thought we were.

Manufacturing employment growth remains flat year-over-year..

Headline seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) was up 0.4 % month-over-month and up 2.0 % year-over-year (note it was reported up 2.2 % last month).

Econintersect‘s analysis using the unadjusted data is that IP growth decelerated 0.2 % month-over-month, and is up 1.8 % year-over-year.

The unadjusted year-over-year rate of growth was unchanged from last month using a three month rolling average, and is up 1.4 % year-over-year.

The market was expecting (from Bloomberg / Econoday):

Headline Seasonally Adjusted Consensus Range Consensus Actual IP (month over month change) 0.1 % to 0.5 % +0.3 % +0.4 % IP Subindex Manufacturing (month over month change) -0.2 % to 0.4 % +0.2 % +0.2 % Capacity Utilization 76.6 % to 76.9 % 76.8 % 76.4 %

IP headline index has three parts – manufacturing, mining and utilities – manufacturing was up 0.2 % this month (up 1.2 % year-over-year), mining up 1.6 % (up 9.9 % year-over-year), and utilities were down 2.2 % (down 2.2 % year-over-year). Note that utilities are 10.8 % of the industrial production index, whilst mining also is 10.8 %.

Comparing Seasonally Adjusted Year-over-Year Change of the Industrial Production Index (blue line) with Components Manufacturing (red line), Utilities (green line), and Mining (orange line)