US manufacturing growth takes a tumble

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As promised… following on from our jobless claims blog, here’s the latest on today’s US economic indicators.

The blue line on the chart below shows the just released 'Empire' index. This gives a guide to business conditions for New York manufacturers. If the index is above zero – as it is now, although it’s at a seven-month low – conditions are still improving.

But a fast-falling blue line means that US economic growth is slowing sharply.

The green line is the ‘Philadelphia Fed’ index, which measures regional changes in American business growth. Again, a green line that’s dropping towards zero is a bad sign for US businesses. And the ‘Philly Fed’ has just hit an 11-month low.

 

Source: Bloomberg

The red line is last quarter’s US GDP growth. No prizes for where that’s heading, particularly after today’s poor manufacturing production figures (a 0.4% monthly decline).

“Today’s data suggests the US industrial recovery is rapidly losing momentum”, says Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics.

In other words, double dip, here we come…

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Published in Blog More articles by David Stevenson

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