Industrial production is made up of a lot of stuff that might not tell us so much about end-use markets that many people are interesting in when looking at these numbers. For example, mining and utilities make up ~25% of IP.
But we do get an extraordinary amount of detail in the US IP data, with indices ranging from saw mill products to semiconductor circuit boards for those that are really keen. The chart on the right doesn't go that far, but does show that the important category of durable goods, which is commodity intensive, has outperformed the rest of IP and is only marginally below the peak reached in 2007.
The recovery in durable goods has been steeper than the economy as a whole firstly because of the impact of inventory gyrations and secondly because for a couple of years households and businesses decided not to replace capital or household goods because the outlook was so uncertain.
US auto producers have also managed to increase market share after being restructured following their flirt with death in 2008.
But while their is potential in this dynamic, the reality of now is that the wobbly conditions of 2012 are still visible in the performance of industrial output. I wouldn't be signalling a change in the status quo unless we saw much better signs in the leading indicators, even when noting the ISM number in Jan.
