Signals · Manufacturing pulse
Manufacturing Momentum: Which Indicators Lead, Which Follow.
A lead-lag correlation study of U.S. manufacturing indicators across 5 years of monthly changes: which move together, which lead, and by how many months.
Signals tracked
- 9 monthly manufacturing indicators are correlated here: industrial production, factory orders, truck tonnage, housing starts, vehicle sales, job openings, steel ppi, primary nonferrous metals ppi, prime rate.
- Every series is reduced to its month-over-month percent change before correlating, so a shared trend cannot manufacture a relationship.
Strongest co-movements
- Vehicle sales and Job openings move inversely (correlation -0.68).
- Industrial production and Vehicle sales move together (correlation 0.56).
- Truck tonnage and Housing starts move together (correlation 0.55).
- Factory orders and Steel PPI move together (correlation 0.38).
- Housing starts and Vehicle sales move together (correlation 0.35).
- Industrial production and Truck tonnage move together (correlation 0.31).
- Industrial production and Primary nonferrous metals PPI move inversely (correlation -0.31).
- Job openings and Steel PPI move together (correlation 0.30).
Methodology
- Correlations are ordinary Pearson coefficients over the months two series have in common; a pair needs at least a year of overlap to appear.
- The interactive page also scans one-to-six-month lags to rank which signals lead which, and publishes each series' out-of-sample forecast accuracy. These are statistical tendencies, not causal claims.
Last reviewed 2026-09-06.