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2008 Economic Calendar |
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Resource Center » U.S. & Intl Recaps | Release Dates | Why Investors Care | Today's Calendar
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Durable goods orders reflect the new orders placed with domestic manufacturers for immediate and future delivery of factory hard goods. The first release, the advance, provides an early estimate of durable goods orders. About two weeks later, more complete and revised data are available in the factory orders report. The data for the previous month are usually revised a second time upon the release of the new month's data. Why Investors Care
| Released on 5/24/06 For Apr 2006 | ||||||||||||
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Highlights
Durable goods orders dropped 4.8% in April, after a sharp 6.6% gain in March. The consensus had expected a 0.5% dip in durables orders in April. Durables orders have been volatile over recent months-a common pattern for this series. Declines in April were led by a 12.7% drop in transportation equipment-primarily nondefense and defense aircraft. However, the April weakness in aircraft orders follows strong prior months. Nondefense capital goods orders fell 6.0% in April after posting gains of 4.7% in February and 11.9% in March.
Industry categories showing declines in April were: machinery, -0.2%; computers & electronic parts, -10.4%; and transportation, -12.7%. Gains were seen in: primary metals, 3.2%; fabricated metal products, 1.9%; and electrical equipment, 5.2%.
Overall inventories rose 0.8% in April-the third gain in four months. Moderate inventory rebuilding appears to be taking place. This will add to current quarter GDP but may lead to a slowing in output later in the year. Overall shipments slipped 0.9% with unfilled orders up 1.5%. Unfilled orders have been healthy in recent months-pointing to strong shipments in coming months and that the inventory build-up may not be worrisome. Today's report is consistent with moderating but healthy growth in the economy later this year.
New orders for durable goods surged 6.5 percent in March. Along with the February gain, this helped offset the January plunge. As usual, aircraft orders, which have generally been up over the past year, are causing most of the monthly volatility. In March, most key sectors posted gains, not just aircraft.
Durable goods orders Consensus Forecast for Apr 06: -0.5 percent
Range: -4.0 to +3.0 percent
![[Chart]](chart.gif)
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Monthly fluctuations in durable goods orders are frequent and large and skew the underlying trend in the data. In fact, even the yearly change must be viewed carefully because of the volatility in this series. |
| 2006 Release Schedule | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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