March new orders for manufactured goods rose 2.5% to $208.4 billion. Shipments increased 1.8% to $207.3 billion. Unfilled orders rose 0.8% to $843.4 billion. And inventories increased 1.3% to $333.9 billion.
The U.S. Commerce Department has two releases this week that analysts will look to as they try to quantify the role of business investment in the economic recovery – the March advance durable goods release coming out this Wednesday, April 27th, and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) release for the first quarter of 2011 coming out on Thursday, April 28th.
Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released advance durable goods data for February 2011. The report contains a couple of noteworthy themes, one being that part of the manufacturing sector continues to expand (with the help of foreign demand), and another being that the pace of investment might be slowing some in the first quarter.
New orders for manufactured durable goods in February 2011 decreased 0.9% to $200.0 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders fell 0.6%. Overall shipments rose 0.3% to $203.2 billion. Capital goods shipments rose 1.3%. Unfilled orders rose 0.4%. And inventories increased 0.9% in February 2011.
We hear a lot about our country’s insatiable appetite for foreign-made goods. However, it is easy to forget that our trading partners also have an increasing appetite for American-made durable goods (where "durable goods" includes such things as computers, furniture, aircraft, machinery, ....). In fact, over the past decade, a growing share of our manufactured goods has been heading overseas. Although the worldwide recession temporarily reversed this trend in 2009, exports rebounded strongly last year and accounted for roughly half of the overall growth in durable goods shipments.
