4
Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization
THE INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION and Capacity Utilization report, assembled and released around the fifteenth of each month by the Federal Reserve Board, presents data on the output of the nation’s manufacturing, mining, and utility sectors. The Federal Reserve’s G.17 report, as it is also known, organizes these data into industrial production and capacity utilization indexes. The industrial production indexes measure the physical volume of the output of various industries and markets; the capacity utilization indexes show what portion of the nation’s production capacity was involved in creating that output. The total industrial production index is usually the headline grabber. Investors may react strongly ...