Matt Yglesias

Industrial Capacity and Utilization

Here’s a chart that nicely illustrates our predicament:

Via.

23 Responses to “Industrial Capacity and Utilization”

1. minderbender Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

   What is this? What does “total” represent, and why is it smaller than “manufacturing” sometimes?

2. Stu Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

   I like what this chart is trying to show, BUT:
   1) How can the total capacity/production be less than the manufacturing capacity/production?
   2) Why aren’t the scale increments evenly spaced?

   Help me out here.

3. jps Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

   How is capacity calculated? Do they include unoccupied real estate developments of all kinds, or just some subset of {residential, commercial, industrial}?

4. minderbender Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

   Stu:

   1. Good question!

   2. Logarithmic scale.

5. Njorl Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

   It’s percentage of 2002 levels. If manufacturing is 110% of the 2002 number, and total capacity is 105% of the 2002 number, manufacturing will be 5 larger.

   Manufacturing in the US is only about 20-30% of total capacity.

6. James Gary Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

   I like the dual wiggly, confident-yet-uncertain line—it reminds me of the work of contemporary illustrators Istvan Banyai and Tomer Hanuka. The solid grey vertical bars add a sort of retro-90’s corporate/cyber touch to the thing, and the sort-of gestural/offset “mini-graph” provides a point of focus to the overall image.

   From a graphic-design/abstract-painting standpoint, I feel this graph is quite successful.

7. minderbender Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

   Ah, makes sense. Normalized them both at 100.

8. stefan Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

   1) Capacity is normalized to 100 for 2002.

   2) Capacity is defined here. Basically a moving average of past output and capital investment measures.

   3) Manufacturing is a subset of industry, which also includes utilities and mining. Total is manufacturing, mining and utilities.

9. minderbender Says:
   February 18th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

   So I think it’s fair to say that the gap between potential and actual dwarfs the difference between manufacturing and total, meaning that it’s only a little bit interesting that manufacturing has relatively more capacity and relatively less utilization. Right? Or am I missing something, like, manufacturing is much more labor-intenstive or something?

10. Stu Says:
    February 18th, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    Thanks for the replies, especially stefan’s link.

11. Giovanni da Procida Says:
    February 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm

    Charts only illustrate things nicely when they intuitively present data in a more coherent way than a written description or a table would.

    For that reason, typically a graph includes labels, so those unhappy reader who fail to be omniscient can determine what the graph intends to show.

12. Anthony Damiani Says:
    February 18th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

    What is the significance of the convergence of manufacturing and total productivity?

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    My overall reaction is: holy crap, what happened in the late 90s? And can we have some more of that?

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