The Advance Report on Durable Goods released today by the Census Bureau was a bit better than expected. Here is the Bureau’s summary on new orders:
New orders for manufactured durable goods in June increased $7.7 billion or 3.4 percent to $235.3 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This increase, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, followed a 2.1 percent May decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.8 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 3.8 percent. Download full PDF
The latest new orders headline number at 3.4% percent was above the Investing.com estimate of 3.0% percent. This series is down -2.8 percent year-over-year (YoY). If we exclude transportation, “core” durable goods came in at 0.8 percent month-over-month (MoM), a bit above the Investing.com estimate of 0.5 percent. However, the core measure is down -4.5 percent YoY.
If we exclude both transportation and defense for an even more fundamental “core”, the latest number was up 1.1 percent MoM, but down -3.0 percent YoY.
Core Capital Goods New Orders (nondefense capital goods used in the production of goods or services, excluding aircraft) is an important gauge of business spending, often referred to as Core Capex. It posted a 0.9 percent monthly gain, However, it is down -6.6 percent YoY.
For a look at the big picture and an understanding of the relative size of the major components, here is an area chart of Durable Goods New Orders minus Transportation and Defense with those two components stacked on top. We’ve also included a dotted line to show the relative size of Core Capex.
The next chart shows year-over-year percent change in Core Durable Goods. We’ve highlighted the value at recession starts and the latest value for this metric.
The next chart shows the growth in Core Durable Goods overlaid on the headline number since the turn of the century. This overlay helps us see substantial volatility of the transportation component.
