US Industrial Production Fell 0.6% in March

Industrial production recorded its biggest drop in more than 2-1/2 years in March, weighed down by a decline in mining and utilities output, fresh evidence that economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter.

Industrial production fell 0.6 percent after edging up 0.1 percent in February, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday. March’s decline was the largest since August 2012 and was worse than economists’ expectations for only a 0.3 percent drop.

Manufacturing output ticked up 0.1 percent. Utilities production tumbled 5.9 percent, reversing February’s 5.7 percent increase. A 17.7 percent plunge in oil and gas well drilling pulled mining production down 0.7 percent last month.

For the first quarter, industrial production declined at an annual rate of 1.0 percent, the first quarterly decrease since the second quarter of 2009. Oil and gas well drilling and servicing, which tumbled at a more than 60 percent annual rate, accounted for the bulk of the drop in industrial output in the first quarter.

via Reuters

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza