Durable goods orders -4.5% in January, +0.7% ex transportation

New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in January, down two of the last three months, decreased $13.0 billion or 4.5 percent to $272.3 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This followed a 5.1 percent December increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.7 percent. Excluding
defense, new orders decreased 5.1 percent. Transportation equipment, also down two of the last three
months, drove the decrease, $14.2 billion or 13.3 percent to $92.8 billion.

Shipments
Shipments of manufactured durable goods in January, down following sixteen consecutive monthly
increases, decreased $0.2 billion or 0.1 percent to $277.2 billion. This followed a 0.4 percent December
increase. Transportation equipment, down following ten consecutive monthly increases, drove the
decrease, $1.6 billion or 1.7 percent to $92.2 billion.

[The last three months have shown wild swings in the durable-orders reports, but those basically zero out. Given that these numbers are *not* adjusted for inflation, the concern here is that this is showing a decline in real production and demand, even when excluding transportation. However, since consumer demand reports show a different story, it’s tough to tell exactly what this means, except perhaps that consumer demand is getting more concentrated on non-durable goods. That’s not a great sign either. — Ed]