Industrial, Manufacturing Production and Business Cycle Indicators

IP at 0.1% m/m vs. 0.3% consensus.

Figure 1: NFP employment (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (bold orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars),  all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA 2026Q1 2nd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (5/7/2026 release), and author’s calculations. 

It bears repeating that real personal income ex-current transfers has been declining for three months.

In contrast to industrial production, manufacturing production was flat.

Figure 2: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED,  Philadelphia Fed, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2026Q1 2nd release, and author’s calculations.

Retail sales come out on Wednesday. Bloomberg consensus is for 0.5% m/m. With May CPI m/m inflation at 0.5%, this means flat real retail sales, after a April decline.