The November figures for manufacturing output published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a fall of -0.3% from October – the 3rd consecutive decline;  as a result, the less volatile measure using a rolling 3-month trend shows manufacturing output was -1.1% lower than in the previous 3-month period and -0.9% down on a year ago.

For November, 7 of the 13 sub-groups of industries within manufacturing saw a month-on-month fall in output, led by “other manufacturing & repair” (-2.1%), “basic pharmaceutical products” (-1.9%) and “transport equipment” (-0.9%).

In the rest of this note, we will use the 3-month rolling trends as they take out some of the noise in the monthly data.  References to these periods will cover September, October and November 2024 as the latest 3 months,  the previous period is June, July and August 2024 and “last year” is September, October and November 2023.

The first level of detail is to look at the capital goods industries (also called investment goods);  here, output fell by -0.7% compared to the previous period and by -1.2% over the level of a year earlier.

All of our 4 key industries saw output fall in the latest 3-month period with declines of -2.6% for the automotive industry, -2.0% for metal products, -1.6% for machinery (mechanical engineering) and -0.6% for aerospace.  The comparisons with a year earlier are more divergent with growth of +2.8% for the metal products industry (which includes sub-contractor activity) and +0.5% for the automotive industry;  however, both machinery (-6.7%) and aerospace (-5.4%) are significantly lower than a year earlier.

You can download the ONS Statistical Bulletin from their web-site at https://www.ons.gov.uk/releasecalendar (16 January) or request it from MTA;  we also have an analysis of the key industries which is available to members – please contact Geoff Noon ([email protected]) if you would like these charts.

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