Manufacturing Production YoY

Manufacturing Production YoY is the 12-month % change in real US factory output on a physical-volume basis, not dollar sales. It is the manufacturing component of Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization from the monthly Federal Reserve statistical release called G.17. It covers codes 31-33 plus logging and book publishing, excluding mining, utilities, services, construction, prices and sales. It is not a PMI-style sentiment poll with a 50 line and has no target, with levels on a 2017 equal to 100 base.

Each release covers 1 calendar reference month, with the 1st estimate published about 15 days after month end, around the 15th of the next month. Releases appear monthly around mid-month at 9:15 AM Eastern time on a schedule posted on the Board G.17 page, with the annual revision at noon. Each estimate is revised over the next 5 months, with about 77% of sources at first and quarterly data joining later. Each release shows 15 tables, charts and files with seasonally adjusted 2017 equal to 100 plus monthly and 12-month changes for market and industry groups.

Factory output moves with durable goods, nondurable goods and logging with publishing, forming 74.78% of total industry outside mining and utilities.

• Durable manufacturing, 36.99%: long-life goods such as machinery, electronics, metals and motor vehicles.
• Nondurable manufacturing, 36.30%: everyday goods such as food, chemicals, paper and petroleum products.
• Other manufacturing, 1.50%: logging plus newspaper, periodical, book and directory publishing.
• Mining, 14.37%: oil, gas, coal and metals output, mostly from physical data.
• Utilities, 10.85%: electricity generation and sales plus natural gas distribution.
• Food, chemicals and motor vehicles, 12.05%, 12.12% and about 5%: packaged food, industrial chemicals and assembly lines that swing the reading.

The May 15, 2020 release for April 2020 showed total output down 11.2%, the largest monthly drop in 101 years, with manufacturing down 13.7%. Motor vehicles and parts fell more than 70% while other factory output fell 10.3%, and durables fell 19.3%. Total stood at 92.6% of its 2012 average, down 15.0% on the year, while manufacturing stood at 85.5%, down 18.0%. Industry use fell to 64.9%, 14.9 points below its 1972-2019 average, with factory use at 61.1%.

1. Annual output: Build annual real output by industry from Census production values divided by detailed price indexes.
2. Monthly shape: Use monthly physical tons or barrels where available, else BLS worker hours with a productivity factor.
3. Base: Express series as relatives of 2017 daily or monthly averages, with 2017 equal to 100.
4. Correction: Apply benchmark factors from census data plus temporary-help hours and judgmental edits for gaps or extremes.
5. Seasonal adjustment: Adjust each series with Census X-13 for holidays and outliers, then sum adjusted series without adjusting totals directly.
6. Aggregation: Combine monthly growth with a Fisher index, the geometric mean at prior and current value-added weights that avoid double counting.
7. Year-on-year: Publish seasonally adjusted levels and compute YoY from unrounded indexes versus 12 months earlier; 100.00 over 99.30 equals 0.70%.