March 2021 Headline Industrial Production Improves
The headlines say seasonally adjusted Industrial Production (IP) improved month-over-month - and now is in expansion year-over-year due to comparision to the pandemic lockdown period one year ago. Our analysis shows the three-month rolling average improved.
Analyst Opinion of Industrial Production
The best way to view this is the 3-month rolling averages which improved. Note that:
In March, total industrial production increased 1.4 percent. The gain in March followed a drop of 2.6 percent in February, which largely resulted from widespread outages related to severe winter weather in the south central region of the country. For the first quarter as a whole, total industrial production rose 2.5 percent at an annual rate. In March, manufacturing production and mining output increased 2.7 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. The output of utilities dropped 11.4 percent, as the demand for heating fell because of a swing in temperatures from an unseasonably cold February to an unseasonably warm March. At 105.6 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production in March was 1.0 percent higher than its year-earlier level, but it was 3.4 percent below its pre-pandemic (February 2020) level. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector increased 1.0 percentage point in March to 74.4 percent, a rate that is 5.2 percentage points below its long-run (1972-2020) average.