- Factory Orders for February fell 1.3% versus estimates of a .8% decline and a 2.3% fall in January.
BOTTOM LINE: Orders to US factories fell more than forecast in February, Bloomberg reported. Excluding orders for transportation equipment, demand fell 1.8%. Bookings for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, a gauge of future business spending, fell 2.4%. Shipments of those goods, used to compute GDP, fell 1.9% versus a .4% decline in January. Bookings for military equipment fell 2.2%. Bookings for transportation equipment rose 1.8%, boosted by a 5.1% surge in aircraft demand. The strike at auto-parts supplier American Axle has closed or idled 30 plants at GM, which is affecting almost half of the automaker’s employees.
Today’s ADP Employment Change showed a gain of 8,000K US jobs in March versus estimates of a 45,000 job loss. Within the report, the service sector added 85,000 workers, while the financial sector was unch and construction employment fell by 22,000. Small companies added 55,000 jobs. I expect Friday’s employment report to be slightly better than economists’ estimates. Factory Orders should bounce back over the next few months as fiscal/monetary stimuli takes hold, companies rebuild depleted inventories and the American Axle strike ends.
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