WASHINGTON — Industrial production unexpectedly fell and consumer confidence slid, adding to evidence of U.S. economic weakness days before Federal Reserve policymakers meet to decide whether more stimulus is needed.
Output at factories, mines and utilities decreased 0.1 percent last month after a revised 1 percent gain in April, the Fed reported Friday in Washington. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment for June fell to 74.1, the lowest level this year, from 79.3 last month.
“We’re traveling along a canal of miserable growth,” said Brian Jones, a senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, who correctly forecast the decline in production. “It’s not fast enough to bring the unemployment rate down or generate an appreciable number of jobs, yet it’s not weak enough that we’re going back into recession.”
New York-area factories expanded this month at the slowest pace since November, another report showed. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic activity index dropped to 2.3 from 17.1 in April. Readings greater than zero show expansion.
Economists forecast a 0.1 percent advance in U.S. production in May, according to a Bloomberg News survey median. Manufacturing, which makes up about 75 percent of total production in the U.S., dropped 0.4 percent last month.Bloomberg News
