Economy
July 28, 2017
Manufacturing Performs Well Through June
Written by Peter Wright
This report summarizes seven data sources that describe the state of manufacturing in the U.S. We have reported on most of these separately in our Steel Market Update publications, therefore we’ll be brief in this summary. We don’t expect these data sources to all point in the same direction. Our intention in summarizing them in one document is to provide a consensus of the state of this critical steel consumption sector.
The Industrial Production Index: Figure 1 shows the IP index since January 2007 with the year/year growth. The three-month moving average (3MMA) declined every month from October 2015 through December 2016 as shown by the brown bars in Figure 1. January this year was the first month of positive growth in the 3MMA since September 2015. Growth improved in each of the first six months of 2017.
