WASHINGTON – New orders for manufactured goods fell 5.6 percent in January to $383.1 billion, after rising 2.6 percent in December, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.
The decline was the largest in more than six years, Bloomberg News said.
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Durable goods orders fell 8.7 percent to $203.3 billion, after rising 3.5 percent in December, the government report said, while orders for nondurable goods fell 2.0 percent to $179.9 billion.
Business spending for new equipment made its sharpest decline since January 2004. Leading the decline were civilian aircraft, plunging 60 percent after surging 31 percent in December; construction equipment, falling 41 percent in January after rising 9.7 percent the month before; and computers and other electronics, retreating 9.5 percent after advancing 2.4 percent in December.
Shipments of durable and nondurable goods fell 1.2 percent to $391.2 billion, after rising 1.3 percent in December in their third straight month of increases.
“Manufacturing had a tough January as the inventory adjustment grinds on,” Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York, told Bloomberg. “Capital spending is off to a weak start in the first quarter.”
Additional information is available at www.census.
