June Durable Goods Surprise to the Upside Again

Orders for fighter jets and other military planes jumped 81%, countering a 2.1% decline in commercial airplanes.

The value of core capital goods orders – a proxy for investment in equipment that excludes aircraft and non-defense capital goods – expanded by 0.5% for a second straight month in June. Those orders were up 10.5% year-on-year (YoY) last month.

Core capital goods shipments, a figure that is used to help calculate equipment investment in the government’s gross domestic product report, rose 0.7% in June following a 1.0% gain the prior month.

The broad-based gain in durable goods included strong booking for motor vehicles, computers and electronic products, and fabricated metals. But orders for primary metals, machinery, and communications equipment fell.

The report also indicated that unfilled orders for all durable goods rose 0.7%. Inventories increased 0.4%.

Click here more detail on the June advance report from the US Census Bureau on durable goods manufacturers’ shipments, inventories, and orders. See also Figure 1 below.

Revised and Recently Benchmarked May Data

Revised seasonally adjusted May figures for all manufacturing industries were: new orders, $544.4 billion (revised from $543.4 billion); shipments, $545.7 billion (revised from $544.4 billion); unfilled orders, $1,109.7 billion (revised from $1,110.0 billion) and total inventories, $798.3 billion (revised from $797.9 billion).

By David Schollaert, David@SteelMarketUpdate.com