US industrial production increased by 0.9 percent month on month in January this year, following a gain of 0.7 percent in December over November, according to the statistics released by the US Federal Reserve.
Accordingly, US production of consumer goods increased by 1.1 percent in January, as the production index for consumer durables advanced 2.7 percent and the index for consumer non-durables rose 0.7 percent. For durables, increases in all of the major categories contributed to the gain; the largest contributor was automotive products, which moved up 5.1 percent.
In January, US manufacturing production rose one percent, with increases for most of its major components, after having slipped by 0.1 percent in December; the level of output in January was 1.7 percent above its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization for US manufacturing in January was 69.2 percent, 4.1 percentage points above the trough recorded in June 2009 but 10.0 percentage points below the average for the period from 1972 to 2009.