If retail sales for March were bad, industrial production (blue in the graph below) was at very least mixed to the upside. Total production increased +0.4%, and on top of that February was revised higher by +0.2%, and January was revised higher by +0.5%.

Freepik

The not so good news is that while manufacturing (red) was also revised higher by +0.5% for February, it was all taken back by a -0.5% decline in March:

With these revisions and additions, industrial production is still -0.5% below its September peak (a big improvement from last month’s original -1.8%), while manufacturing production (red) is -1.2% below its peak from last October, also an improvement from the original -2.0% last month.

In both 2016 and 2019 there were bigger declines than even as measured one month ago without there being a recession, because manufacturing has shrunk so much as a percentage of the overall economy. Still, this remains one of the 4 main coincident indicators relied on by the NBER, and more often than not in the past its peak has meant the cycle peak as well.

Once the February nominal manufacturing sales data for February is reported later this morning, I will make estimates of that important coincident indicator in real terms as well.

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