WASHINGTON — The value of new factory orders in January saw a 1.4% decline, slightly lower than the 1.3% decrease expected in an MNI survey, data released by the Commerce Department Tuesday morning showed.
Nondurable goods orders rose 0.8%, while durable goods orders were revised up marginally to a 3.6% decrease from the 3.7% decline reported in the advance estimate.
Petroleum and coal products shipments were up 3.5% in January, leading the increase in nondurables orders. Also contributing to the increase was food products, paper products, and apparel. The rest of the categories were mixed, with few significant declines. Nondurables shipments are equivalent to orders in this report.
Total factory orders excluding transportation rose 0.4% in January, this is a softer gain than the 0.9% and 1.1% rises seen in December and November, respectively. This increase makes it the eighth consecutive rise.
Transportation orders for January decreased 10.0% based on Tuesday's data. Contributing to the decline, defense aircraft and parts fell 45.6%, while nondefense aircraft and parts orders also fell drastically by 28.4%. Motor vehicles orders also saw a decline, albeit a smaller 0.5% in January. However, the only increase registered in the transportation category was for orders for ships and boats which rose by 6.7%. The unlisted transportation components also declined by 6.2%.
Nondefense capital goods new orders declined by 1.6%, and even excluding aircraft it saw a decline of 0.3%. Civilian aircraft capital goods was down 12.6%, and excluding defense and civilian aircraft it was down 0.6%.
Overall factory shipments rose 0.6% in the month due to a 0.3% gain in durable goods shipments and a 0.8% rise in nondurables shipments. Nondefense capital goods shipments registered a decline of 0.1%, and was still down 0.1% when excluding the aircraft component.
Factory inventories increased by 0.3% in the month, compared with the 0.6% increase in shipments, keeping the inventory-to-shipments ratio at 1.35, making this the third consecutive month.
The Commerce Department's advance report on inventories showed a 0.7% increase for wholesale inventories and a 0.8% increase for retail inventories. While these data are eligible for revision, the levels as they stand now, combined with Tuesday's factory inventory data, would result in a 0.6% rise in January business inventories when that report is released on March 14, an MNI calculation showed. The revised wholesale data for January will be released on March 9 and could alter this projection.
