Compared with one year ago, capacity utilization contracted 8.5%, which was the fourth straight month that the month-over-month rate of change contracted at a slower rate and the slowest rate of contraction since February.
The last two months of machine tool orders were the two highest of 2020.
The annual rate of growth accelerated to 20.1% in August, which was the fifth straight month of accelerating growth and the fastest rate of growth since December 2014.
August 2020 was the eighth consecutive month and 11th of the last 13 that the real rate was negative.
The value of the U.S. dollar has fallen since April, this decline makes U.S. exports cheaper when converted to prices in foreign currencies and thus more price competitive. This should be helpful in turning around the steep contraction in export order activity for manufactured goods since the start of COVID.
Michael Guckes, Chief Economist and Director of Analytics, shares highlights from the August 2020 Gardner Business Index.
July new orders contracted just 5.7% less than one year ago, which was the slowest rate of month-over-month rate of contraction in the last five months
Jobs data from Automatic Data Process (ADP) recorded a total loss of 1.34M manufacturing jobs between January and April 2020. May reported the first month of positive manufacturing jobs growth with an increase of 252,000. Between May and August manufacturers added back nearly 600,000 jobs for a net-change of -744K in the year-to-date period.
Excluding the impact of supplier deliveries, the Gardner Business Index would have registered 49.2 as opposed to an expansionary 50.7 reading. Expanding new orders and production activity in August is highly encouraging because these measures have historically acted as a bellwether for the overall index.
July income was 8.4% more than one year ago. However, the one-month rate of growth decelerated for the third consecutive month.
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