Economic Indicators Remain Favorable for Manufacturing

Economic indicators of manufacturing activity are still healthy overall and suggest conditions should remain positive for the balance of this year and into the first quarter of 2018.

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 and therefore will 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. Based on AISI estimates of steel mill shipments by market classification, almost 50 percent of the steel consumed in the U.S. is manufacturing-oriented. This breaks down to about 27 percent in ground transportation including infrastructure, 9 percent in machinery and equipment, 5 percent in appliances, 4 percent in defense and about 4 percent in containers.