Annual growth rate in US industrial production still looks healthy

15 Sep 2012 by Jim Fickett.

Data on industrial production are ambiguous. We could be seeing another temporary rough patch, or we could be seeing the beginnings of a more substantial slowdown.

On Friday the Federal Reserve released industrial production figures through August. In keeping with recent negative readings from the PMI, industrial production did take a dip in August, and the manufacturing sub-index has been pretty much flat for several months.

That is on the one hand. On the other hand, recent variations could still be within the range of random noise, and year-over-year growth, which is very strongly correlated with the business cycle, still looks quite healthy.