Global Crude Steel Production Is Down

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Meanwhile, here are the major economic headlines from the last week:

• Global crude steel production fell 4.3 percent from March 2023 to March 2024 to 161.2 million metric tons. Output from China, the world’s top producer and consumer of crude steel, fell 7.8 percent year-over-year. Production in North America was down 1.4 percent. Read the full report here.
• U.S. gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024 after rising 3.4 percent in the last quarter of 2023. The expansion primarily reflected increases in consumer spending, residential and nonresidential fixed investment, and state and local government spending. Private inventory investment fell while imports, a subtraction from GDP, rose. In related news, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s National Activity Index, a key gauge of future growth, increased to +0.15 in March from +0.09 in February. Read more here.
• The manufacturing sector continued to struggle in various regions of the United States in April. Specifically, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond reported manufacturing activity in the central Atlantic region improved slightly, but was still in contractionary range. Of the bank’s three component indexes, shipments increased from -14 to -10, new orders rose from -17 to -9, and employment fell from 0 to -2. The manufacturing industry in the Midwest also contracted last month. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’ composite index fell from -7 in March to -8 in April as activity declined for both durable and nondurable goods. Food, metals, electrical equipment, and paper manufacturing drove the weaker readings.
• U.S. personal incomes rose 0.5 percent from February 2024 to March 2024. The personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, increased 0.3 percent.
• The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits for the first time stood at 207,000 during the week that ended April 20, a number that was down 5,000 from the week before. Averaged over the past four weeks, first-time claims fell slightly to 213,250. In all, roughly 1.781 million people claimed jobless benefits during the week that ended April 13.
• In other economic news: prices of products manufactured in Canada, as measured by the Industrial Product Price Index, increased 0.8 percent from February 2024 to March 2024, but fell 0.5 percent between March 2023 and March 2024; Canadian retail sales decreased 0.1 percent to $66.7 billion in February after sales in five of nine subsectors, including at gas and fuel vendors, fell; and the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fell from 79.4 in March to 77.2 in April due to greater worries about current economic conditions.