Oddly, even though the government shutdown has crippled most reporting, the Census Bureau did update the durable goods report for August today, and it does reveal an essential bifurcation in the state of the economy.

First, here are the topline leading indicators: total durable goods orders (blue), core capital goods orders (red), and consumer durable goods orders (gold, right scale):

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The difference between the first two and the last one is striking, and even more descriptively so when we measure them YoY:

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As of the last report, consumer durable goods orders were dead in the water, down -0.1% YoY. By contrast, headline durable goods orders were up 7.6% YoY, and core capital goods orders up 4.0%.

The difference between the core and headline numbers is almost all driven by transportation orders (i.e., Boeing) (blue), not defense (red):

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And a more detailed breakdown of new orders by industry reveals that the biggest increases have been computer-related (red) and communications (gold), although other sectors have grown significantly as well:

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This is yet more evidence that the AI buildout in data centers and electronics updates are the driving force behind the continued expansion in the economy, fueling outsized stock price gains in the sector (and providing the fuel for wealth effect consumer spending); while the larger consumer sector is not growing at all.

EDITED TO ADD: And just to put an exclamation point on the data, here is Joe Wiesenthal with a breakdown of spending on AI data centers and everything else:

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