New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $4.1 billion or 2.5 percent to $158.6 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease followed two consecutive monthly increases including a 1.3 percent May increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 1.1 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.7 percent.
They should really report this number "ex-Boeing".
Let's go to the chart:
Like most statistics, you can break down the last year's activity into two periods. The first is the last half of last year when things fell out of bed. This is the period when the recession gained steam and there was wide-spread talk of a deflationary spiral. The second period started at the beginning of this year when activity returned to a more normal pattern. Notice that the gray bars of the last six months are far more regular than the bars of the last six months of last year.
The point to all of this is we've had six months of numbers that look like normal durable goods activity.
