New orders for US durable goods picked up in January after losing ground for two months in a row, in a sign of strength among US manufacturers.
The US Commerce Department said today that new orders for long-lived manufactured goods jumped 4.9% in January to $237.5 billion.
The main contribution to the surge coming from the civilian aircraft sector, essentially from Boeing. New aircraft orders surged 54.2%.
Also strong were car orders, which rose by 3%.
But stripping out transportation items, durable goods orders still managed a 1.8% gain in the month, more than compensating for the falls of November and December.
Orders for both machinery and computers rose more than 6%.
Another sign of improvement in a sector that has been hit by the global slowdown and, for exporters, the strong dollar, was that manufacturers' inventories fell 0.1% in January after a December rise, and that inventories excluding transportation were down 0.4%.
