The numbers: The Commerce Department said Friday that orders for durable goods went up 0.7% in April, making it the third month in a row that they have gone up.
The Wall Street Journal polled economists and found that they thought orders for durable goods would drop by 0.5%.
Since the spring of 2023, this is the first time that prices for durable goods have gone up for three months in a row.
If you take out transportation, orders were up 0.4%.
When volatile industries like transportation and defense are taken out of the picture, core capital goods orders went up 0.3% last month after going down 0.1% in March.
In April, 0.4% more of these “core orders” were shipped.
Important facts: The defense sector was responsible for a lot of the rise in orders. If you take out defense, orders were flat in April.
Transportation goods orders also went up a lot, going up 1.2% after going up 2.5% the month before. It took 1.5% more time to order cars and car parts. Orders for new non-defense aircraft dropped by 8%.
In April, there were 3.9% more new orders for computers and related items.
The main reason economists thought the durable goods report would be weak was because Boeing Co. BA, 0.96% was having problems. The company that makes airplanes said that they got seven new orders in April, down from 113 in March. But, as is often the case, that weakness didn’t show up in the government data.
The fact that gains have been seen for three months in a row could mean that manufacturing is no longer stuck.
Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note before the report came out that manufacturing has been hurt by high interest rates, a strong dollar, and a slow global economy.
In the future: An economist at Oxford Economics named Bernard Yaros said, “We look for business equipment spending to improve over the remainder of the year.” This is because people are less worried about a recession and factory construction is still going strong.
There were some changes in the market after the economic data came out. Stocks DJIA SPX were slightly higher in late morning trading on Friday, while the 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y stayed the same at 4.48%.
