Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

By looking at industrial production and capacity utilization you would think that the economy is on somewhat stable ground.  The Fed released the data here which shows a rise in industrial production and an increase in capacity.

Production has been up in 5 of the past 6 months while capacity, currently at 79.3% is approaching the long term average of 80.3%.  We've come a long ways since the 2009 low is 66% capacity utilization.

You would think that with these steady gains in production it would have created more jobs.  However as we have noted before productivity although slowing is still producing meaningful gains.  Also rather than hiring people, companies are working their employees longer.

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