- by New Deal democrat
Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to.
Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for June was positive, but less so than appeared on the surface.
Headline industrial production (blue in the graph below) increased 0.3% for the month. It is higher by 0.7% than it was one year ago, and 0.5% higher than it was in September 2022, its former post-pandemic high. Manufacturing production (red) increased 0.1% and is 1.0% higher than one year ago, but -0.1% lower than its post-pandemic high of October 2022:
What’s the difference? As has been the case a number of times in the past year, utilities production (blue in the graph below), and specifically electrical utilities (red):
I strongly suspect this is due to the necessity to generate power for mining crypto - a complete net waste of resources, and a negative for climate.
In any event, this is a coincident positive for the economy.
