Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey

May 30, 2017

Results Summary

Click on links in the table for greater details. Historical data are available from June 2004 to the most current release month.

*Indicator direction refers to this month's index. If index is positive (negative), indicator is increasing (decreasing) or improving (worsening). If zero, indicator is unchanged.

**Number of months moving in current direction.

Data have been seasonally adjusted as necessary.

May 30, 2017

Production Index

Downloadable chart

May 30, 2017

Comments from Survey Respondents

These comments are from respondents' completed surveys and have been edited for publication.

Primary Metal Manufacturing

• Phone activity is slower; we are still working a little over 40 hours, but incongruently looking for employees. We are having to give raises for the bottom-rung employees to create an opening for new hires. Two of the last three new hires did not stay more than a month. The third one is now in jail, and I don’t know whether he will be returning.
• We look for the construction industry to be strong through 2018.
• Hiring employees is a challenge.
• We have seen an overall increase in orders.

Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing

• The key for our business will be the summer, which is traditionally slow. But with this fall and the spring of 2018 refinery turnaround season being strong, we could see a pickup in business. It will depend a lot on refinery utilization.
• There has been a slowing in our markets, which appears to be a lull because quoting activity remains brisk but orders are slower to book. Our leading indicators are pointing to a 10 percent increase over the next 12 months in low-rise (five stories and less) volumes.
• Business is slightly up in May from a disappointing April and year-to-date averages.
• Significant capital expenditures are planned to absorb additional volume required.
• The global economies and U.S. economy are very weak and uncertain.

Machinery Manufacturing

• We have seen a great increase in orders in the first quarter. Sales have gone down a bit since then; however, we remain optimistic. Our customers continue to only make short lead-time orders (10-12 weeks), causing our forecast to look artificially low. We are hoping as the market improves, we will have longer delivery periods.
• Most publicly traded companies in the segment are reporting flat to declining sales versus the same quarter last year. This is in contrast to industry trade publications, which still forecast modest growth. These forecasts are interpolated from survey respondents and may be influenced by dealer consolidation.

Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing

• Business definitely feels stronger than a year ago, but the question is how long it will last.
• The world economy should revive in many areas between Asia and Europe. South America is still very slow. The manipulation of the dollar by other currencies is affecting our customers’ ability to sell capital equipment out there.

Paper Manufacturing

• Our industry put a raw-material price increase in place.

Electrical Equipment, Appliance and Component Manufacturing

• We went through a little choppy environment in 2016, with a consolidation of a smaller competitor by a larger one that compressed margins and volumes. While we think our end markets are doing well, we are just getting back to where we should have been last year, so things are improving. We are getting hammered on aluminum-wire margins due to dumping by China.

Transportation Equipment Manufacturing

• Imports from Asia still severely limit this company's ability to manufacture at a competitive price.
• Our sales are down 15 percent through April.
• Oil and gas offshore market conditions have negatively affected our business in the last couple of years.
• President Trump’s policies need implementing or we will fall back to weakness.

Historical Data

Historical data can be downloaded dating back to June 2004.

Indexes

Download indexes for all indicators. For the definitions of all variables, see Data Definitions.

All Data

Download indexes and components of the indexes (percentage of respondents reporting increase, decrease, or no change). For the definitions of all variables, see Data Definitions.