US industrial production edged up by 0.1 percent month on month in February this year, following a gain of 0.9 percent in January over December, according to the statistics released by the US Federal Reserve.
Accordingly, US production of consumer goods fell by 0.4 percent month on month in February. The index for consumer durables fell 2.3 percent, while the index for consumer nondurables edged up 0.1 percent. The decline in consumer durables was led by a drop of 4.4 percent in automotive products; other major components registered small declines. Despite the decrease in February, the output of consumer durables was up 9.2 percent from its year-earlier level as a result of an increase of 27.0 percent in automotive products
In February, manufacturing output fell 0.2 percent month on month after having risen 0.9 percent in January; the level of output in February was 1.5 percent above its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization for manufacturing edged down 0.1 percentage point in February to 69.0 percent, a rate 3.9 percentage points above its trough in June 2009 but 10.2 percentage points below its average for the period from 1972 to 2009.