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Industrial production (IP) ticked up 0.1 percent in August after decreasing 0.4 percent in July. Manufacturing output rose 0.2 percent in August after edging down 0.1 percent in July. Within manufacturing, the production of motor vehicles and parts increased 2.6 percent in August, while factory output elsewhere edged up 0.1 percent. The index for mining moved up 0.9 percent, and the index for utilities decreased 2.0 percent. At 103.9 percent of its 2017 average, total IP in August was 0.9 percent above its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization maintained the same rate of 77.4 percent in August, a rate that is 2.2 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2024) average.

Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: Summary

Market Groups

The major market groups posted mixed results in August. The index of consumer durables gained 0.6 percent, largely driven by a 1.3 percent increase in automotive products, while the index of consumer nondurables rose 0.3 percent with gains in nearly all of its categories. The index for business equipment edged down 0.1 percent, as a 1.2 percent decline in the output of industrial and other equipment more than offset a 2.1 percent gain in the output of transit equipment and a 0.7 percent gain in the output of information processing equipment. The index for construction supplies rose 0.6 percent, while the index for business supplies fell 0.4 percent. The index for materials edged up 0.1 percent.

Industry Groups

Manufacturing output increased 0.2 percent in August and was 0.9 percent above its year-earlier level. In August, the durable manufacturing index increased 0.2 percent after increasing 0.3 percent in July. Among the largest durables indexes by weight, motor vehicles and parts posted a 2.6 percent increase in August while fabricated metal products and machinery both posted declines. The nondurable manufacturing index increased 0.3 percent in August after dropping 0.5 percent in July. Among nondurables, the largest gains in August were posted by textile and product mills (2.5 percent) and by petroleum and coal products (1.6 percent), while the largest decline was posted by plastics and rubber products (0.7 percent). The indexes for chemicals and for food, beverage, and tobacco products—the largest nondurable goods industry groups by weight—posted gains of 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.

Mining output grew 0.9 percent in August after falling 1.5 percent in July. In August, the index for utilities decreased 2.0 percent, as a 2.3 percent decline in the output of electric utilities more than offset a 0.2 percent increase in the output of natural gas utilities.

Capacity utilization for manufacturing ticked up 0.1 percentage point in August to 76.8 percent, a rate that is 1.4 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2024) average. The operating rate for mining rose 0.7 percentage point to 90.6 percent, and the operating rate for utilities moved down 1.6 percentage points to 68.6 percent. The rate for mining was 4.1 percentage points above its long-run average, while the rate for utilities remained substantially below its long-run average.

Revision of Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

The Federal Reserve Board tentatively plans to issue its annual revision to the indexes of industrial production (IP) and the related measures of capacity utilization in the fourth quarter of 2025. Series will be newly benchmarked using information from the 2022 Economic Census. The weights for market-group splits of the industry-level indexes will be updated with information from the 2017 benchmark input-output accounts from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Other annual data, including information on the mining of metallic and nonmetallic minerals (except fuels), will be incorporated. The updated IP indexes will include revisions to the monthly indicator (either product data or input data) and to seasonal factors for each industry. In addition, the estimation methods for some series may be changed. Any modifications to the methods for estimating the output of an industry will affect the index from 1972 to the present.

Capacity and capacity utilization will be revised to incorporate data for manufacturing through the fourth quarter of 2024 from the U.S. Census Bureau's Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization, along with new data on capacity from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Energy, and other organizations.

Note. The statistics in this release cover output, capacity, and capacity utilization in the U.S. industrial sector, which is defined by the Federal Reserve to comprise manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities. Mining is defined as all industries in sector 21 of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS); electric and gas utilities are those in NAICS sectors 2211 and 2212. Manufacturing comprises NAICS manufacturing industries (sector 31-33) plus the logging industry and the newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishing industries. Logging and publishing are classified elsewhere in NAICS (under agriculture and information, respectively), but historically they were considered to be manufacturing and were included in the industrial sector under the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. In December 2002 the Federal Reserve reclassified all its industrial output data from the SIC system to NAICS.

G.17 Release Tables:

• Summary: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 1: Industrial Production, Capacity, and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 2: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
• Chart 3: Industrial Production of Selected Industries
• Table 1: Industrial Production: Market and Industry Groups (percent change)
• Table 2: Industrial Production: Special Aggregates and Selected Detail (percent change)
• Table 3: Motor Vehicle Assemblies
• Table 4: Industrial Production Indexes: Market and Industry Group Summary
• Table 5: Industrial Production Indexes: Special Aggregates
• Table 6: Diffusion Indexes of Industrial Production
• Table 7: Capacity Utilization: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities
• Table 8: Industrial Capacity: Manufacturing, Mining, and Utilities (percent change)
• Table 9: Industrial Production: Gross Value of Products and Nonindustrial Supplies
• Table 10: Gross-Value-Weighted Industrial Production: Stage-of-Process Groups
• Table 11: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry
• Table 12: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing
• Table 13: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Total Industry excluding Selected High-Technology Industries
• Table 14: Historical Statistics for IP, Capacity, and Utilization: Manufacturing excluding Selected High-Technology Industries
• Table 15: Industrial Production: Reliability Estimates

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