Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: The 2003 Annual Revision

Abstract

In late 2003, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve issued revisions to its measures of industrial, capacity, and capacity utilization for the period from January 1972 to September 2003. The changes are generally small and principally affect data from 2000 to the present. Measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter, industrial output is now reported to have increased at a slower rate in 2000 and to have contracted a bit more slowly in 2001 than reported earlier. The changes to total industrial production in other years are slight. The revision still places the most recent peak in total IP in June 2000 and the corresponding trough in December 2001. The 6-1/4 percent peak-to-trough decline in output is about 1/2 percentage point less than the previous estimate. After the trough, the total index showed gains in the first half of 2002, only to trend down again until mid-2003 and then to head up. The revised measures of overall capacity are only minimally different from earlier estimates. Capacity expanded rapidly during the second half of the 1990s and slowed considerably since then. The rate of industrial capacity utilization (the ratio of production to capacity) remained at a low level in the third quarter of 2003--the last full quarter of data--and was unchanged by the revision. At 74.6 percent, the operating rate is 4 percentage points below the trough of the 1990-91 recession and 6.7 percentage points below its 1972-2002 average.