Forecast · Manufacturing pulse

The U.S. manufacturing forecast.

6-month projections for U.S. industrial production, factory orders, truck tonnage, housing starts, vehicle sales, and metal and resin prices, with accuracy.

Six-month projections

  • Industrial production: projected 98.4 within six months (roughly flat from today), model backtest accuracy 99%.
  • Capacity utilization: projected 75.7% within six months (roughly flat from today), model backtest accuracy 100%.
  • Factory orders: projected $676B/mo within six months (rising 3% from today), model backtest accuracy 99%.
  • Truck tonnage: projected 116.3 within six months (rising 1.8% from today), model backtest accuracy 98%.
  • Housing starts: projected 1354k within six months (falling 5.1% from today), model backtest accuracy 83%.
  • Vehicle sales: projected 17.3M within six months (rising 3.3% from today), model backtest accuracy 99%.
  • Steel mill PPI: projected 381.7 within six months (rising 5.6% from today), model backtest accuracy 98%.
  • Aluminum PPI: projected 473.0 within six months (rising 15% from today), model backtest accuracy 99%.
  • Copper PPI: projected 679.6 within six months (rising 22% from today), model backtest accuracy 96%.
  • Plastic resins PPI: projected 354.9 within six months (rising 14.2% from today), model backtest accuracy 92%.

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.