Industrial production and capacity utilization data for April 2021 are now available.Total industrial production increased 0.7 percent in April. The indexes for mining and utilities increased 0.7 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively; the index for manufacturing rose 0.4 percent despite a drop in motor vehicle assemblies that principally resulted from shortages of semiconductors. An important contributor to the gain in factory output was the return to operation of plants that were damaged by February's severe weather in the south central region of the country and had remained offline in March. The weather-induced drop in total industrial production in February and the subsequent rebound in March are now estimated to have been larger than reported last month.At 106.3 percent of its 2012 average in April, total industrial production has moved up 16.5 percent from its level in April 2020 (the trough of the pandemic), but it was 2.7 percent below its pre-pandemic (February 2020) level. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector rose 0.5 percentage point in April to 74.9 percent, a rate that is 4.7 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2020) average. ]]>
