WASHINGTON – New orders for durable goods last month increased 0.6 percent to $217.9 billion, slowing from March’s revised 5.0-percent rise, according to preliminary figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The increase – the third in a row and fifth in six months – lagged the 1.0-percent median forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of 72 economists.
Non-defense new orders for durable goods increased 0.6 percent in April after rising 4.5 percent the month before.
New orders for durable goods excluding transportation – analysts’ preferred measure, because the month-to-month variance in orders for aircraft and automobiles tends to obscure underlying trends – increased 1.5 percent, surpassing the Bloomberg survey’s 1.4-percent forecast.
Shipments of manufactured durable goods increased by 1.9 percent to $213.1 billion, in their second month of increases, after rising 1.3 percent in March.
Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods increased 1.8 percent in April to $718.6 billion, the highest level since the survey was revised in 1992. The increase, which matched March’s rise, was the 24th in 25 months.
Among capital goods, non-defense new orders decreased 0.8 percent to $77.6 billion while defense new orders increased 0.8 percent to $7.4 billion.
“It’s looking like the first-quarter dip in capital spending was just a scare, and that spending is coming back in line,” Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg News. (His firm had predicted no change in orders.) “The worries about downside risks to the economy from capital spending are dissipating.”
Additional information, including the Advance Report on Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders (M3), is available from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of the Census, Manufacturing and Construction Division, at www.census.gov/m3.
