April 15 (Reuters) – A sharp rebound in automotive output in March spurred a third straight monthly gain in U.S. factory activity, perhaps signaling the worst of the production woes that have dogged the motor vehicle industry over the last year may have passed.
Overall industrial production increased 0.9% last month, keeping pace with February’s upwardly revised pace, the Federal Reserve said on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast factory production accelerating 0.4%. Output jumped 5.5% from a year earlier.
Especially hard hit by supply issues has been the automotive sector, where production has been hampered for more than a year by a global shortage of electronic components, especially the computer chips needed for today’s increasingly complex vehicle operating systems.
But U.S. motor vehicle and parts production shot up by 7.8% last month, the largest increase since October, after a downwardly revised drop of 4.6% in February. Total assemblies of cars and light trucks rose to nearly 9.5 million vehicles at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the highest since January 2021, up from 8.3 million the month before.
Capacity use for the manufacturing sector increased to 78.7% in March, the highest level since 2007, from 78.1% in February.
Officials at the Fed tend to look at capacity use measures for signals of how much “slack” remains in the economy — how far growth has room to run before it becomes inflationary.
Its Empire State Manufacturing Index rose to a four-month high of 24.6 after a reading of negative 11.8 in March. The survey’s prices paid index shot to a record high of 86.4 from 73.8 last month.
Optimism in the outlook waned, however, with the six-month outlook index dropping to 15.2, the lowest in about two years, from 36.6 in March.
