U.S., Canadian Steel Shipments Advance While Aluminum Shipments Drop

Connecting the Dots monitors all major economic announcements in the United States and Canada, but MSCI also offers industrial metals industry-specific data products that provide much deeper analysis and insight. Visit MSCI’s website and click on industry data to learn more about our Metals Activity Report (MAR),  Momentum Monitors, and Economic Pulse.

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

• The Metals Service Center Institute’s December 2023 Metals Activity Report showed improvement in steel shipments for both the United States and Canada from a year ago. U.S. aluminum shipments were down sharply for the same period. Specifically, U.S. service center steel shipments improved 3.5 percent from December 2022 to December 2023 while shipments of aluminum products fell 15.2 percent. Canadian service center steel shipments were up 3.6 percent year-over-year, but aluminum product shipments fell 1.8 percent. Subscribers can get the full report here.
• U.S. industrial production rose 0.1 percent in December, but fell at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter. Manufacturing output edged up 0.1 percent in December while the index for utilities declined one percent during the month. Mining was up 0.9 percent. At 102.5 percent of its 2017 average, total industrial production in December was one percent above its level from a year earlier. Read the full report here.
• Manufacturing sales  n Canada rose 1.2 percent to $71.7 billion in November, helped by higher sales in the chemical subsector and gains in primary metal and machinery groups. Sales of motor vehicles fell four percent, however.
• Regional manufacturing readings for January continued to indicate activity in the sector is slowing. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, manufacturing activity in its region fell sharply this month, reaching its lowest point since May 2020. Readings for new orders, shipments, employment, and the average workweek all declined, pushing the index to -43.7, down from -14.5 a month earlier. While the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s manufacturing index rose to -10.6 in January from -12.8 in December, meanwhile, the bank said manufacturing activity in its region continued to decline overall. Specifically, general activity, new orders, and shipments rose, but remained in negative territory, and the employment index was virtually unchanged.
• U.S. business inventories fell in November for a second consecutive month. The 0.1 percent drop followed a similar decline in October and reflects a slowdown in inventory investment. Read the full report here.
• U.S. housing market news was mixed last month. The number of new homes under construction fell 4.3 percent between November 2023 and December 2023, but was up 7.6 percent between December 2022 and December 2023. Existing home sales in the United States fell one percent from November to December and were down 6.2 percent from the year before. On an annual basis, in 2023 existing home sales were at their lowest level in nearly 30 years.
• The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits fell by 16,000 to 187,000 during the week that ended January 13. It was the lowest total since September 2022. Averaged over the past four weeks, first-time claims declined to 203,250, the lowest reading in almost a year. In all, roughly 1.81 million people claimed benefits in the United States during the week that ended January 6.
• In other economic news: Retail sales in Canada  fell 0.2 percent between October 2023 and November 2023; U.S. import prices were unchanged in December while prices for U.S. exports fell 0.9 percent; and Canada’s consumer price index rose 3.4 percent between December 2022 and December 2023.