The Economy

Only A Short Slowdown In The U.S.?

May 25, 2005

New orders for U.S. manufactured durable goods, generally big-ticket items that are designed to last three years or more, surged in April after three consecutive monthly declines. In a report released on May 25, the U.S. Commerce Department valued new orders for manufactured durables at a seasonally adjusted $200.3 billion, up 1.9% from March's total of $196.6 billion. The percentage increase was significantly above the 1.1% gain that economists generally expected.

David Huether, chief economist of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers, says the surge "suggests manufacturing is emerging from the soft patch it went through in the first three months of the year."

But it's premature to pronounce the end of America's most recent economic slowdown. Although new orders for computers posted a 15.8% month-to-month gain and fabricated metals, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances had gains in the low single digits, the standout new-order increases were in non-defense aircraft and parts, up 28.2%, and defense aircraft and parts, up 26.3%. Indeed, take transportation out of the total and new orders for U.S. manufactured durables fell two-tenths of a percentage point last month. New orders for communications equipment alone were down 18.8%. "It does not take much digging beneath the surface of [the] report to see that there is still a soft underbelly in the business sector," says Sheryl King, a senior economist at Merrill Lynch & Co., New York.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.