December 2011 Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization and Capacity

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Industrial production increased 0.4 percent in December after having fallen 0.3 percent in November. For 4Q2011 as a whole, industrial production rose at an annual rate of 3.1 percent, its tenth consecutive quarterly gain. In the manufacturing sector, output advanced 0.9 percent in December with similarly sized gains for both durables and nondurables. At 95.3 percent of its 2007 average, total industrial production in December was 2.9 percent above its level of a year earlier. Wood Products output jumped by 4.2 percent but Paper output fell by 1.0 percent.
 

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The capacity utilization rate for total industry rose to 78.1 percent, an increase of 0.4 percent from a month earlier but a rate 2.3 percentage points below its long-run (1972--2010) average. Wood Products and Paper capacity utilization was split: respectively, +4.4 and -0.9 percent.
 

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Capacity at the all-industries and manufacturing levels crept higher (0.1 percent); By contrast, Wood Products dropped by 0.2 percent while Paper declined by 0.1 percent.