Durable-goods orders rise 3.4% in March

WASHINGTON – New orders for durable goods last month rose 3.4 percent to $ 214.9 billion, accelerating from February’s 2.5-percent pace, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today.
The increase – the fourth in five months – exceeded the 2.5-percent average forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of 75 economists.
Excluding defense, new orders for durable goods rose 4.5 percent in March after increasing 2.5 percent the month before.
Excluding transportation – the preferred measure, because month-to-month variance in orders for aircraft and automobiles can obscure underlying trends – they increased 1.5 percent after two months of declines, exceeding the Bloomberg survey’s 1.1-percent forecast.
Shipments of manufactured durable goods edged up 0.8 percent to $207.8 billion after falling 1.4 percent in February and 1.5 percent in January.
Unfilled orders increased by 1.8 percent to a new high of $717.0 billion after rising 1.1 percent in February. They have increased in 22 of the past 23 months.
Among capital goods, non-defense orders rose 11.7 percent in March to $80.2 billion, after rising 9.5 percent the month before. But defense orders declined 22.4 percent to $6.4 billion, after rising 3.5 percent in February.
“We had been worried that businesses weren’t confident enough to invest and this shows better confidence,” Adam York, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., told Bloomberg News. “It’s still too early to say manufacturing is completely on the mend, but this is a positive.”
Additional information is available at www.census.gov/indicator/www/m3.