US Census says manufacturing new orders declined. Our analysis is the opposite.
![](https://www.netgrafika.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/z-temp9.png)
Analyst Opinion of Census Manufacturing Sales
According to the seasonally adjusted data, it was civilian and defense aircraft that caused the decrease – although there was a general weakness throughout. The data in this series is noisy so I would rely on the unadjusted 3 month rolling averages which improved..
Note that when one inflation adjusts, the numbers are worse than the headlines.
Backlog of orders deterioration returned and remains in contraction year-over-year.
![](http://econintersect.com/images/z%20manufacturing.png?v=9)
US Census Headline:
The seasonally adjusted manufacturing new orders is down 0.8 % month-over-month, and up 4.8 % year-to-date.
Market expected (from Bloomberg / Econoday) month-over-month growth of -0.9 % to 0.1 % (consensus -0.6 %).
Manufacturing unfilled orders down 0.2 % month-over-month, and down 1.4 % year-over-year.
Econintersect Analysis:.
Unadjusted manufacturing new orders growth accelerated 2.9 % month-over-month, and up 6.0 % year-over-year.
Unadjusted manufacturing new orders (but inflation adjusted) up 3.0 % year-over-year.
Three month rolling new order rolling averages was up 0.9 % month-over-month, and is up 5.1 % year-over-year.
Unadjusted manufacturing unfilled orders growth decelerated 0.1 % month-over-month, and down 1.4 % year-over-year
As a comparison to the inflation adjusted new orders data, the manufacturing subindex of the Federal Reserves Industrial Production growth down 0.4 % month-over-month, and up 1.7 % year-over-year.
Seasonally Adjusted Manufacturing Value of New Orders – All (red line, left axis), All except Defense (green line, left axis), All with Unfilled Orders (orange line, left axis), and all except transport (blue line, right axis)
![](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?graph_id=81242)
The graph below shows sector growth year-over-year.