Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization:
The 2008 Annual Revision
Figure 5. Capacity utilization: Selected high-technology industries, and manufacturing excluding selected high-technology industries, January 1989-June 2008. The figure contains one panel that shows the utilization rates for selected high-technology industries and for manufacturing excluding selected high-technology industries; the data are plotted as curves. Unit measure is percent. The panel has shaded regions for the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The operating rate for manufacturing excluding selected high-technology industries generally decreased from 1989 through early 1991, during 1995, from late 1997 though late 2001, and from late 2007 through mid-2008; it generally increased or was flat during other periods shown in the figure. The utilization rate for the selected high-technology industries moved in a similar pattern, though with more variability, up through 1995. Afterward, it showed substantially more volatility, with peaks in early 1996, mid-1997, and mid-2000 and with troughs in early 1997, 1998, and 2002. Starting in late 2002, it climbed from about 57 percent to about 80 percent by late 2006 and has been little changed after that.
Note: The high-technology industries are identified in the note to figure 3.