Manufacturing Metrics

A review of several key economic indicators is dominated by negative signs.

Manufacturing employment declines continue, led by "white collar" losses. Seasonally adjusted manufacturing employment was reported at 13.7 million by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Manufacturing employment continued

Within durable goods, total employment declined 40,000 in February. During the past year, production worker employment decreased 121,000 (2.0%) as compared to 82,000 (3.3%) for nonproduction "white collar" employment in durable goods.

Since 2004, durable goods losses have been led by "white collar" job losses (9.7%) as compared to 1.4% "blue collar" jobs gains. Since 1998, the durable goods sector has lost 20.5% in both white and blue collar jobs.

Durable manufacturing reports record profits but nondurable manufacturing declined 37%. Third quarter 2007 manufacturing profits fell to $50 billion (17%) as compared to record highs set in the second quarter 2007 as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in February. Total corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments were down 3% to $1.515 trillion.

The Institute for Supply Management (Tempe, AZ) also reported that manufacturers' order backlogs continue to erode, with the Inventories and Customer Inventories Indexes indicating that manufacturing inventories are at reasonable levels, the major concern is rising prices and falling volume.

Manufacturing production held steady in January, with a year-over-year increase of 2%.

In 2007, US exports to China increased 18.1% over 2006 ($10 billion) while imports increased 11.7% ($33.7 billion). The goods deficit with China averaged nearly $256 billion for the past 12 months, resulting in a 0.6% trade gap increase.

Overall, the US trade deficit increased 0.2% over last year. The US total goods deficit for the past 12 months averaged $790 billion, slightly down from the previous month.