The data released
by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday revealed that the U.S. industrial
production decreased by 0.3 per cent m-o-m in March, following an upwardly revised 0.8 per cent m-o-m advance m-o-m (from +0.7 per cent m-o-m) in February. This represented the first monthly decline in industrial output in four months.
Economists had anticipated
industrial production would drop 0.2 per cent m-o-m in March.
According to
the report, the
March fall in industrial output was driven by a 5.8 per cent m-o-m tumble in
the index for utilities, as temperatures were warmer than is typical for the
month. Meanwhile, the indexes for manufacturing and mining increased 0.3 per cent
m-o-m and 0.6 per cent m-o-m, respectively.
Capacity utilization for the industrial sector fell by 0.4 percentage point m-o-m to 77.8 per cent in March from an unrevised 78.2 per cent in February. That was 0.2 percentage
point below economists’ prediction of
78.0 per cent and 1.8 percentage points below its long-run (1972-2024) average.
In y-o-y terms,
the industrial output rose 1.3 per
cent in March, following an upwardly revised .5 per cent gain (from +1.4 per cent) in the previous
month. This marked the weakest annual increase in U.S. industrial production since
December 2024 (+0.5 per cent).
For the first
quarter as a whole, the U.S. total industrial production surged by 5.5 per cent
y-o-y.