INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AND CAPACITY UTILIZATION

[2007 Revision Notice Below]

Industrial production increased 0.3�percent in November; the change in production over the previous three months was revised down, on net, an average of 0.1 percentage point per month. At 113.9 percent of its 2002 average, total industrial production in November was 2.1 percent above its year-earlier level. Output in the manufacturing sector increased 0.4�percent in November. The output of utilities dropped 1.3�percent because of a decline in electric utilities; the output at mines increased 1.1�percent. Capacity utilization for total industry edged up, to 81.5 percent, a rate slightly above its year-earlier level and 0.5 percentage point above its 1972-2006 average.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AND CAPACITY UTILIZATION: SUMMARY
Seasonally adjusted

Industrial production	2002=100				Percent change
	2007				2007				Nov. '06 to Nov. '07
	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.
Total index	114.1	114.4	113.6	113.9	-.1	.3	-.7	.3	2.1
Previous estimates	114.4	114.6	114.0		.1	.2	-.5
Major market groups
Final Products	115.0	115.1	114.2	114.5	-.3	.1	-.8	.2	1.5
Consumer goods	109.6	109.4	108.5	108.3	-.2	-.1	-.8	-.2	.7
Business equipment	133.1	134.3	133.4	134.7	-.6	.9	-.6	.9	4.0
Nonindustrial supplies	111.3	111.7	110.7	110.5	.0	.4	-.9	-.2	.9
Construction	109.5	109.1	108.5	108.5	-.3	-.4	-.6	-.1	1.0
Materials	114.3	114.7	114.0	114.6	.0	.4	-.6	.5	3.2
Major industry groups
Manufacturing (see note below)	115.9	116.1	115.3	115.8	-.6	.2	-.6	.4	2.2
Previous estimates	116.1	116.3	115.8		-.4	.2	-.4
Mining	100.5	102.4	101.7	102.9	-.8	1.9	-.7	1.1	2.1
Utilities	111.5	111.1	109.6	108.1	5.0	-.4	-1.3	-1.3	1.2

Market Groups

The output of consumer goods declined 0.2 percent in November; the decreases were concentrated in nondurables. The output of durable consumer goods advanced 0.9 percent, as the production of automotive products moved up 1.9 percent after having declined for three consecutive months. The gain in automotive products in November reflected an increase of 0.3 million units in the assemblies of light motor vehicles, to 10.4 million units (annual rate). The production index for home electronics moved up 1.5 percent, but the production indexes for appliances, furniture, and carpeting and for miscellaneous durable goods were unchanged. For a second consecutive month, the production index for nondurable non-energy consumer goods fell. The indexes for consumer chemical products, paper products, and foods and tobacco all registered declines. After having dropped 1.1 percent in October, the index for consumer energy goods fell 0.7 percent in November, as the residential use of electricity decreased.

The index for business equipment moved up 0.9 percent. All of its major components posted gains. The output of transit equipment rose 1 percent, an increase led by a bounceback in assemblies of medium and heavy trucks. The index for information processing equipment increased 2.3 percent; the gains were widespread across components. The index for industrial and other equipment moved up 0.2 percent, and the output of defense and space equipment advanced 1.3 percent.

The index for construction supplies moved down 0.1 percent, its fifth consecutive monthly decline; nevertheless, the index remained 1.0 percent above its year-earlier level. The index for business supplies edged down 0.2�percent.

The production of materials increased 0.5 percent after having decreased a similar amount in October. Within non-energy materials, the index for durable materials advanced 0.9�percent in November, and the gains were widespread across components. Small gains in consumer parts and in other durable materials were accompanied by a more sizable gain in equipment parts. The output of nondurable materials moved up 0.4 percent; gains in chemical materials more than offset decreases in textile and paper materials. The index for energy materials decreased 0.1 percent after having dropped 0.8 percent in October.

Industry Groups

Manufacturing output increased 0.4 percent in November after having decreased 0.6 percent in October. The factory operating rate rose 0.2 percentage point in November, to 79.9 percent, a rate that is about equal to its 1972-2006 average. The production of durable goods moved up 0.8�percent. Many categories of durable goods showed production gains, notably computer and electronic products, motor vehicles and parts, and primary metals. Small decreases in output were recorded in wood products, nonmetallic mineral products, fabricated metal products, and miscellaneous manufacturing. The production of nondurable goods increased 0.1 percent after having decreased 0.7 percent in October. Significant declines in November were registered for textile and product mills, paper, and petroleum and coal products. However, the production of plastics and rubber products rose 1.3 percent, and the output of chemicals advanced 0.5 percent. The output of non-NAICS industries (publishing and logging) fell 1.0�percent.

The output of mines increased 1.1�percent in November, and the capacity utilization rate for mining increased to 92.3 percent, a rate 4.9 percentage points above its long-run average. The output of utilities decreased 1.3 percent. The output of natural gas utilities increased 1.0 percent, but that of electric utilities dropped 1.7 percent. The operating rate at utilities declined 1.2 percentage points, to 85.2 percent, a rate below its 1972-2006 average.

Capacity utilization by stage of processing changed as follows: For industries at the crude stage, utilization increased 1.1 percentage points, to 90.5 percent, a rate 4 percentage points above its 1972-2006 average. For industries at the primary and semifinished stages, utilization decreased 0.1 percentage point, to 81.9 percent, a rate 0.3 percentage point below its long-run average. For industries at the finished stage, utilization moved up 0.1 percentage point, to 78.1�percent, 0.3 percentage point above its long-run average.

Notice

Revision of Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

The Federal Reserve Board plans to issue an annual revision to the index of industrial production (IP) and the related measures of capacity and capacity utilization around the end of March 2008. The revised IP indexes will incorporate data from the 2006 Annual Surveys of Manufacturers and data from selected editions of the 2006 Current Industrial Reports, all from the U.S. Census Bureau. Annual data from the U.S. Geological Survey regarding metallic and nonmetallic minerals (except fuels) for 2006 will also be incorporated. The updating will include revisions to the monthly indicator (either product data or input data) and to seasonal factors for each industry as well as changes in the estimation methods for some series. Any changes to methods for estimating the output of an industry will affect the index from 1972 to the present.

After the publication of the revision, later monthly releases will include new or revised indexes for a six-month reporting window: one month of new data and revisions to the previous five months of data. The new longer reporting window will allow the incorporation of additional lagging data before an annual revision. The longer reporting window will cause the latest month of data shown for a few indexes to be as many as five months earlier than the latest value for aggregate industrial production; data for detailed production indexes are not shown in the supplement to the G.17 until either the underlying data are available or the reporting window is closed. Currently, the data issued for only a few of the published indexes would be affected by this change.

Capacity and capacity utilization will be revised to incorporate data from the Census Bureau's 2006 Survey of Plant Capacity, which covers manufacturing, along with new data on capacity from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Department of Energy, and other organizations.

Once the revision is published, it will be available on the Board's website at www.federalreserve.gov/releases/G17. The revised data will also be available through the website of the Department of Commerce. Further information on these revisions can be obtained from the Board's Industrial Output Section (telephone number 202-452-3197).

Note. The statistics in this release cover output, capacity, and capacity utilization in the U.S. industrial sector, which is defined by the Federal Reserve to comprise manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities. Mining is defined as all industries in sector 21 of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS); electric and gas utilities are those in NAICS sectors 2211 and 2212. Manufacturing comprises NAICS manufacturing industries (sector 31-33) plus the logging industry and the newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishing industries. Logging and publishing are classified elsewhere in NAICS (under agriculture and information respectively), but historically they were considered to be manufacturing and were included in the industrial sector under the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. In December 2002 the Federal Reserve reclassified all its industrial output data from the SIC system to NAICS.

G.17 Release Tables:

Ascii	Screen reader	Summary: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
Chart		Chart 1: Industrial Production, Capacity, and Capacity Utilization
Chart		Chart 2: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
Chart		Chart 3: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, High Technology Industries
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 1: Industrial Production: Market and Industry Groups (percent change)
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 2: Industrial Production: Special Aggregates and Selected Detail (percent change)
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 3: Motor Vehicle Assemblies
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 4: Industrial Production Indexes: Market and Industry Group Summary
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 5: Industrial Production Indexes: Special Aggregates
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 6: Diffusion Indexes of Industrial Production
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 7: Capacity Utilization: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 8: Industrial Capacity: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities (percent change)
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 9: Industrial Production: Gross Value of Products and Nonindustrial Supplies
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 10: Gross-Value-Weighted Industrial Production: Stage-of-Process Groups
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 11: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 12: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 13: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry excluding Selected High-Technology Industries
Ascii	Screen reader	Table 14: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing excluding Selected High-Technology Industries