The US manufacturing sector just delivered a report card that would generously be described as “needs improvement.” New orders for durable goods rose just 0.3% in June, according to the Census Bureau’s advance report released July 27. Wall Street had been expecting something closer to 2.5%.
The numbers tell a tepid story
June durable goods orders totaled $334.8 billion, clawing back only a fraction of May’s 4.5% decline. The prior month’s revised total came in at $332.1 billion, meaning June barely moved the needle after a rough spring.
Strip out the notoriously volatile transportation sector, and the picture doesn’t improve much. Core orders, excluding transportation equipment, rose 0.6% against expectations of 0.8%.
The one genuine bright spot was computers and electronic products, which jumped 3.1% and added roughly $0.9 billion to the overall total. Without that sector doing the heavy lifting, the headline number would have looked even more anemic.
