- by New Deal democrat
First, a little blogging note. This week is light on data. House prices tomorrow, jobless claims Thursday, then a bunch of month end/beginning data on Friday. In other words, don’t be surprised if I take a day off.
This morning the report on durable goods orders for August was released. Manufacturing is a leading sector of the economy, and new orders both for manufacturing and consumer goods are short leading indicators. Both the total and the “core” capital goods less transportation (i.e., Boeing plane orders) were positive for the 15th time in the past 16 months:
In short, manufacturing continues to do quite well.
Although they weren’t part of this morning’s release, I also included consumer durable goods in the above graph as well (red). These have been increasing since April, after a sustained decrease last fall and winter.
In short, although there are many bottlenecks, in particular in transporting materials to factories, and goods from factories to sellers, orders for goods that will last a (relatively) long time continue to get better. There is simply no downward pressure on the producer sector of the economy at this time.
