US Industrial Production Sees Biggest Annual Gain In 3 Years Despite Slowing Capacity Utilization

First things first, this is data for September. But we would given this morning’s Industrial Production and Manufacturing Output data a ‘meh’ ranking.

Industrial Production rose just 0.1% MoM (as expected) up from the downwardly revised 0.3% MoM decline in August. On a YoY basis, production rose 1.62% – its best since Nov 2022…

US Manufacturing output was unchanged in September (slowing from the 0.1% MoM rise in August), but, like IP, that supported a 1.5% YoY rise in output, its highest level since April 2022…

But the big headline of this (admittedly lagged) report is the weakness in Capacity Utilization at just 75.9% in September (well below the 77.4% print for August, which was revised down to 75.9%, and a big miss versus the 77.2% exp)

Source: Bloomberg

Just as we have seen with the employment data, it appears the US Manufacturing economy has flatlined for much of Q3. Certainly supportive of a cut next week and trend toward more cuts (which are not priced in for now).