June 2017 Manufacturing New Orders Decline Continues

US Census says manufacturing new orders declined. Our analysis is the opposite.

Analyst Opinion of Census Manufacturing Sales

According to the seasonally adjusted data, it was civilian and defense aircraft that caused the decrease – although there was a general weakness throughout. The data in this series is noisy so I would rely on the unadjusted 3 month rolling averages which improved..

Note that when one inflation adjusts, the numbers are worse than the headlines.

Backlog of orders deterioration returned and remains in contraction year-over-year.

US Census Headline:

The seasonally adjusted manufacturing new orders is down 0.8 % month-over-month, and up 4.8 % year-to-date.

Market expected (from Bloomberg / Econoday) month-over-month growth of -0.9 % to 0.1 % (consensus -0.6 %).

Manufacturing unfilled orders down 0.2 % month-over-month, and down 1.4 % year-over-year.

Econintersect Analysis:.

Unadjusted manufacturing new orders growth accelerated 2.9 % month-over-month, and up 6.0 % year-over-year.

Unadjusted manufacturing new orders (but inflation adjusted) up 3.0 % year-over-year.

Three month rolling new order rolling averages was up 0.9 % month-over-month, and is up 5.1 % year-over-year.

Unadjusted manufacturing unfilled orders growth decelerated 0.1 % month-over-month, and down 1.4 % year-over-year

As a comparison to the inflation adjusted new orders data, the manufacturing subindex of the Federal Reserves Industrial Production growth down 0.4 % month-over-month, and up 1.7 % year-over-year.

Seasonally Adjusted Manufacturing Value of New Orders – All (red line, left axis), All except Defense (green line, left axis), All with Unfilled Orders (orange line, left axis), and all except transport (blue line, right axis)