Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization:
The 2006 Annual Revision
Figure 1 is titled "Industrial production, capacity, and capacity utilization: Total industry, January 1999-April 2007." The figure shows the revised and previous measures of industrial production, capacity, and capacity utilization; the data are plotted as curves in two panels. Production and capacity are in the left panel, and utilization is in the right panel. For production and capacity, the curves are plotted against a ratio scale, with 2002 output = 100. For capacity utilization, the curves are plotted against a linear scale in units of percent.
The region for the 2001 recession, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is shaded in both panels. The contours of the curves shown are presented in
table 1
. The revisions to total industrial production raised output in 2003 but lowered it in 2004 and afterward. The revision raised industrial capacity in 2002 but lowered it afterward. Capacity is now falling or essentially flat from mid-2002 through mid-2005, after which it turns up; the previous data showed capacity increasing at the beginning of 2004. Capacity utilization for total industry in recent years was little changed from the previous estimates. After peaking in early 2000, at 82.6 percent, it fell rapidly through the end of 2001, reaching around 74 percent, and then climbed back up, somewhat erratically, over the next 5 years to reach above 82 percent in the middle of 2006 (
appendix table A.2
).
NOTE: Here and in the following figures, the shaded regions are periods of business recession, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Data labeled "revised" are the corresponding data in the Federal Reserve Statistical Release G.17, "Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization," published on May 16, 2007. Data labeled "previous" are those published before the December 11, 2006, annual revision. The "previous" data for capacity extend through the end of 2006 because the capacity indexes are based on annual projections that are converted to a monthly basis.