The Fed said U.S. industrial production increased 0.7% in September, as utilities led sector gains and manufacturing returned to growth in preliminary data released Friday.
Utility production rose 3.5% from August. Output from mines increased 0.2%, and factory production was up 0.3%; the factory figure followed a 0.2% August drop after revision. The Fed also revised August’s total production increase to 0.1%, from an initial estimate of no change.
For the third quarter, total industrial output grew at a 2.8% annual rate. The annualized pace was 14.8% for utilities, 5% for mining and 0.7% for manufacturing. September production was 2.2% higher than a year earlier.
Capacity utilization, also reported as a preliminary September figure, reached 76.9%, compared with August’s revised 76.4%. The rate was still 2.5 percentage points below its long-run average for 1972-2025.
The Federal Reserve plans to publish its annual revision of the industrial production indexes and capacity-utilization measures on Nov. 24.
