Durable goods orders were up a seasonally-adjusted 6.5% in the month of June 2017. Nearly all of that gain, however, was due to a jump (131%) in new orders for civilian aircraft. That meant demand for transportation equipment, a highly volatile segment, rose 19% in the month. Excluding all that, durable goods were up just 0.2% month-over-month.

Sentiment indicators like the ISM Manufacturing PMI suggest ebullient conditions that just aren’t matched by activity levels. Halfway through 2017, that shouldn’t any longer be the case. You can understand some lingering problems especially given the nature of the downturn/manufacturing recession, but long before June those should have fully disappeared.

Unadjusted, new orders for durable goods in June 2017 were up only 6% from June 2016. According to both the adjusted as well as unadjusted figures, last June was the bottom or trough in terms of durable goods. Shipments a year later are up only 5.5%.

These growth rates are consistent with levels last seen in 2014, even more so when compared to those before the last two benchmark revisions reduced dramatically these manufacturing sector estimates. It was also in the summer of 2014 when a jump in civilian aircraft orders (for Boeing) distorted durable goods figures that ended up being the peak before the downturn.

Year-to-date, durable goods orders are up just less than 5%. That is about half the growth rate historically expected during an upturn or cyclical change. In 2004, for example, durable goods orders were in the first half up 10% from the beginning six months of 2003. Likewise, in 1994 (and again in 1995) during the bond market massacre and the supposed Greenspan-engineered soft landing durable goods demand rose by the same 10%.

Over the last five years, ever since the 2012 slowdown, the manufacturing sector has gone nowhere. Alternating between only shallow contraction and its absence, there is no indicated momentum that would suggest breaking out of an alarming historical aberration. You just aren’t going to find any economic account where year after year the net result is no expansion. Even recessions have always been followed by swift recovery, leaving the contraction as but a temporary interruption an otherwise the clear upward trajectory.