US factory orders fall a second straight month in September

NEW orders for US-manufactured goods fell for a second straight month in September, and business spending on equipment appears to have pulled back in the third quarter.

Factory orders dropped 0.5 per cent after a downwardly revised 0.8 per cent decrease in August, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Monday (Nov 4). Economists polled by Reuters had forecast factory orders would fall 0.5 per cent, after a previously reported 0.2 per cent decline in August.

Factory orders were unchanged from a year earlier.

The government also reported that orders for non-defence capital goods excluding aircraft, which are seen as a measure of business spending plans on equipment, increased 0.7 per cent in September instead of the previously reported 0.5 per cent.

Shipments of these so-called core capital goods fell 0.1 per cent instead of declining 0.3 per cent as reported last month. Non-defence capital goods orders dropped 4.4 per cent, instead of by 4.5 per cent as initially estimated.

Shipments of those goods decreased 3.4 per cent rather than 3.6 per cent, as initially estimated. These shipments go into the calculation of the business spending on equipment component in the gross domestic product report. That suggests a slowing in business investment in equipment in the third quarter. REUTERS