Forecast ยท Manufacturing pulse

The U.S. manufacturing forecast.

Six-month forecasts for the indicators that lead U.S. manufacturing: industrial production, capacity utilization, factory orders, truck tonnage, housing

Six-month projections

  • Industrial production: projected 99.4 within six months (rising 0.8% from today), model backtest accuracy 100%.
  • Capacity utilization: projected 76.0% within six months (rising 0.6% from today), model backtest accuracy 100%.
  • Factory orders: projected $684B/mo within six months (rising 4% from today), model backtest accuracy 98%.
  • Truck tonnage: projected 120.2 within six months (rising 2.1% from today), model backtest accuracy 99%.
  • Housing starts: projected 1223k within six months (rising 3.9% from today), model backtest accuracy 93%.
  • Vehicle sales: projected 16.8M within six months (rising 1.5% from today), model backtest accuracy 97%.
  • Steel mill PPI: projected 367.3 within six months (rising 5.4% from today), model backtest accuracy 97%.
  • Aluminum PPI: projected 465.4 within six months (rising 15% from today), model backtest accuracy 98%.
  • Copper PPI: projected 679.4 within six months (rising 21.4% from today), model backtest accuracy 98%.
  • Plastic resins PPI: projected 355.4 within six months (rising 11.3% from today), model backtest accuracy 97%.

How the model works

  • Each series is fit with damped Holt-Winters exponential smoothing (the ETS family used by statistical agencies): level, trend, and a twelve-month seasonal pattern where two years of history exist.
  • The smoothing and damping parameters are chosen automatically by grid search, scored on walk-forward one-step accuracy on held-out months, so the model shown is the one that has actually tracked each series best.
  • The confidence band is built from held-out prediction errors and widens with the square root of the horizon. Everything is deterministic: the same archived history always produces the same forecast and accuracy.
  • Projections are a statistical extrapolation of past behavior, not investment advice or an official outlook.

Sources

  • Underlying series come from the Federal Reserve (G.17 industrial production and capacity), the U.S. Census Bureau (factory orders, housing starts), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (producer price indexes), the Bureau of Economic Analysis (vehicle sales), and the American Trucking Associations via FRED (truck tonnage).

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.