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Industrial production rose 0.5 percent in November. The indexes for both manufacturing and mining increased 0.7 percent, while the index for utilities decreased 0.8 percent.

At 102.3 percent of its 2017 average, total industrial production in November was 5.3 percent above its year-earlier level and at its highest reading since September 2019. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector increased 0.3 percentage point to 76.8 percent; even so, it was 2.8 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2020) average.

Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: Summary

Market Groups

Gains were widespread among the market groups in November. The index for consumer goods rose 0.7 percent, with increases for both durables (particularly automotive products) and non-energy nondurables but a decrease for consumer energy products. Likewise, the index for materials moved up, with gains for both durables and nondurables but a dip for energy materials. For the industrial sector as a whole, non-energy production advanced 0.9 percent, whereas the output of energy goods fell 0.4 percent. The index for defense and space equipment increased 2.5 percent for the largest gain among the major market groups.

Industry Groups

In November, manufacturing output rose 0.7 percent, reaching its highest level since January 2019. The indexes for durables, nondurables, and other manufacturing (logging and publishing) rose 0.8 percent, 0.5 percent, and 0.8 percent, respectively. Within durables, the largest increases were posted by motor vehicles and parts and by aerospace and miscellaneous transportation equipment. The only decrease was posted by machinery. Despite the increase for motor vehicles and parts in November, production for that industry was 5.4 percent below its year-earlier level. Within nondurables, textile and product mills, paper, and plastics and rubber products all recorded gains of more than 1 percent; the index for petroleum and coal products fell 1.2 percent after rising 3.8 percent in October.

Capacity utilization for manufacturing increased 0.5 percentage point to 77.3 percent in November, its highest rate since December 2018. The operating rate for mining rose 0.6 percentage point to 77.7 percent, while the operating rate for utilities fell 0.8 percentage point to 73.2 percent. The rates for all three groups remained below their long-run averages.

Revision of Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

The Federal Reserve Board plans to issue its annual revision to the indexes of industrial production (IP) and the related measures of capacity utilization in the second quarter of 2022. New annual benchmark data for manufacturing for 2020 will be incorporated, as well as other annual data, including information on the mining of metallic and nonmetallic minerals (except fuels). The updated IP indexes will include revisions to the monthly indicator (either product data or input data) and to seasonal factors for each industry. In addition, the estimation methods for some series may be changed. Any modifications to the methods for estimating the output of an industry will affect the index from 1972 to the present.

Capacity and capacity utilization will be revised to incorporate data for manufacturing through the fourth quarter of 2021 from the U.S. Census Bureau's Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization, along with new data on capacity from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Energy, and other organizations.

Note. The statistics in this release cover output, capacity, and capacity utilization in the U.S. industrial sector, which is defined by the Federal Reserve to comprise manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities. Mining is defined as all industries in sector 21 of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS); electric and gas utilities are those in NAICS sectors 2211 and 2212. Manufacturing comprises NAICS manufacturing industries (sector 31-33) plus the logging industry and the newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishing industries. Logging and publishing are classified elsewhere in NAICS (under agriculture and information respectively), but historically they were considered to be manufacturing and were included in the industrial sector under the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. In December 2002 the Federal Reserve reclassified all its industrial output data from the SIC system to NAICS.

G.17 Release Tables:

• Summary: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 1: Industrial Production, Capacity, and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 2: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 3: Industrial Production of Selected Industries
• Table 1: Industrial Production: Market and Industry Groups (percent change)
• Table 2: Industrial Production: Special Aggregates and Selected Detail (percent change)
• Table 3: Motor Vehicle Assemblies
• Table 4: Industrial Production Indexes: Market and Industry Group Summary
• Table 5: Industrial Production Indexes: Special Aggregates
• Table 6: Diffusion Indexes of Industrial Production
• Table 7: Capacity Utilization: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities
• Table 8: Industrial Capacity: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities (percent change)
• Table 9: Industrial Production: Gross Value of Products and Nonindustrial Supplies
• Table 10: Gross-Value-Weighted Industrial Production: Stage-of-Process Groups
• Table 11: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry
• Table 12: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing
• Table 13: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry excluding Selected High-Technology Industries
• Table 14: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing excluding Selected High-Technology Industries
• Table 15: Industrial Production: Reliability Estimates

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